Terror Ballot

by Don Pendleton

  Nearly two dozen 24-grain metal pellets ripped the gunmen to pieces as the grenade launcher belched death. Bolan immediately triggered follow-up bursts from the assault rifle, dropping to one knee to lower his profile. Several of the gunmen fell.

  Bayard’s .38 barked. A man screamed horribly. Bolan followed the sound and dumped another bullet into the wounded man’s head, snapping his skull backward. Bayard winced and went to the floor.

  The inspector’s instincts were good. There were two more shooters, rushing into the room from the attached kitchen. Their weapons were identical to the one that had unleashed the opening salvo, at least to Bolan’s experienced ear. They were French MAT-49 subguns, developed in the late 1940s and produced for the next thirty years until they were phased out in favor of the FAMAS assault rifle.

  “Bayard!” Bolan shouted as he dumped the M16’s magazine and swapped it with a fresh one from his war bag.

  “I am not hit,” Bayard said from the floor. “Are you clear?”

  “Clear. How long do we have?”

  “Before police response? All the time in the world.”

  “No,” Bolan stated. “Before the gunfire brings more like these.”

  “Considerably less. But they will not be so eager for a few minutes.”

  “Then we better check while we can,” Bolan told him. “What did we walk into here?”

  The inspector pushed himself to his feet. The front of his trench coat was stained with something dark and wet that was not blood; he frowned and started to rub at it, then thought better of it. Looking around the wreckage of the ground-floor flat, he opened his mouth to speak, then he stopped.

  “None of these men is Fayini,” he said. “They wear his gang’s colors, but he is not here.”

  The pair scanned what was left of the apartment. Bullet holes pocked every wall. There was at least three weeks’ buildup of garbage, including fast-food wrappers; trash bags of lumpy, rotten leftovers; a few empty boxes of 9 mm Parabellum ammunition and even piles of pizza boxes.

  Bolan shook his head at that; it was universal among flops and safehouses of this type. There was also a lot of broken glass, much of it colored. Bolan bent and inspected one of them. He found himself holding a colored glass tube the length of his forearm. It reeked of hashish. There was evidence of other narcotics around the flat, as well.

  The two men surveyed the rooms, checking the corpses to make sure there were no gunmen still alive. The place was small; there were few places a man could hide. Bolan did check the bathroom and the filthy tub, sweeping the equally filthy plastic shower curtain aside with the barrel of his rifle. There was nothing in the tub except an inky black ring that looked as if it were made of tar.

  The tile, the commode and the tub itself might once have been porcelain, but they were now ash gray, covered in mildew and oily grime. The smell in the bathroom was so bad it nearly made Bolan’s eyes water.

  Returning to the living area, the soldier made a more thorough search of the corpses. He photographed each one with his sat phone, which was programmed to upload the photos immediately to the Farm for cross-referencing.

  His search of the dead men’s clothing wasn’t very helpful. He found a cheap folding knife, which he discarded, and some extra magazines for the MAT-49s. There was also a magazine for a weapon not in evidence, but that looked like it belonged to a Browning Hi Power. He thumbed the rounds out of the gun and dropped it on the floor. Then he set to emptying the submachine-gun magazines before field-stripping the MAT-49s themselves.

  “What are you doing?” Bayard asked.

  “There’s a lot of hardware here,” Bolan replied. “Enough that I’m not comfortable leaving it lying around for the neighborhood kids to play with.” He removed the firing pin from first one, then a second weapon, tossing the pins into one of the leaking bags of garbage on the floor. Then he scattered the parts of the guns around the room.

  “You do not care much for preserving evidence, do you, Agent Cooper?” Bayard did not sound overly troubled.

  “We both know you’re not going to bring a forensic team into this no-go zone and pore over a bunch of dead gangbangers for clues.”

  “True enough.” Standing in the hallway, Bayard spread his arms to indicate the flat. “Where could he have gone? We have searched everywhere. Fayini entered and disappeared. What was his mission?”

  “What sort of cell phone surveillance are you running locally?” Bolan asked.

  “The usual,” Bayard replied. “We have reasonably good coverage and keyword recognition throughout the city. The gangs use prepaid phones and satellite. The prepaids are no problem. Satellite, much problem, but these are expensive and require a line of sight to the sky. Unlike your own very special phone, it would seem.”

  Bolan did not respond to that, other than to note that Bayard had to have been watching him closely as the soldier took his photos. “So if Roelle wanted to communicate something to his people quick, he’d probably send a runner. And if it was big, his runner would be somebody high up the chain. Like his trusty lieutenant.”

  “Yes,” Bayard said. “It would be Fayini.”

  “So he hurried here with a message and then turned to vapor.”

  “A passable theory.”

  “And that message is something Roelle didn’t want intercepted.” As he spoke, Bolan was feeling his way along the rear wall of the flat. The bullet holes had ripped large craters in the drywall. He paused, turning his cheek to the wall.

  “There’s a draft here,” Bolan said. “Another room on the side of this one.”

  “Then Fayini left through a hidden exit—”

  “Found it,” the soldier announced. He pressed in along the seam he had felt in the rear wall. A section of the plaster facade, its edges disguised by a network of cracks, moved smoothly inward. Bolan let his assault rifle lead the way as he pushed through, expecting at any moment to begin taking enemy fire again.

  An upholstered chair, the only furniture in the small room, moved six inches across the filthy shag carpet on the floor.

  Bolan snapped a savage kick into the chair, knocking it over. The tunnel beneath looked like an old sewer access. The wide eyes that looked up at the soldier from just above the lip of the tunnel belonged to Razor Fayini. He disappeared, either jumping or sliding down. Bolan threw himself into the tunnel, trusting that Fayini would break his fall.

  The bone-cracking heap in which they landed brought shouts of pain from Fayini, who had absorbed Bolan’s two-hundred-plus pounds of weight. Bolan drove the butt of his assault rifle into his quarry’s head, but the man ducked and managed to snake a hand into his pocket.

  Steel glittered in light reflected from above. Fayini pushed himself against the ladder, his left arm cradling his chest and what were probably a couple broken ribs. The straight razor in Fayini’s hand weaved back and forth before the gang lieutenant in practiced, fluid motions.

  He might be injured, but he was far from harmless. Bolan noted the shadow above as Bayard loomed at the tunnel entrance. No doubt the inspector’s .38 was trained on Fayini from up there, but killing the man would tell them little.

  Fayini’s eyes drifted to something on the tunnel floor.

  Bolan stepped back two paces before letting his own eyes fall. There was a short stack of photographs on the grimy concrete.

  Kids. The pictures were all of children.

  Razor lunged.

  Bolan batted the folding blade away from himself with the barrel of his rifle. He followed through with a strike from the weapon’s butt against Fayini’s face, driving the man into the side of the sewer tunnel. The folding razor hit the ground, and Bolan kicked it away. He planted the toe of his combat boot in Fayini’s face for good measure.

  With the criminal stunned, Bolan scooped up the photographs. He thumbed through them. />
  “What is that?” Bayard called down.

  “Every one of these is a scared-looking kid with today’s newspaper held in front of him,” Bolan called up. “There’s writing on the back. Looks like each one has a surname on it. Some have first and last names.”

  Bayard reached down. “Let me see.” He took the photos from Bolan.

  Fayini began to reach for his waistband. Bolan kicked him savagely in the ribs, doubling him over, before pushing him onto his stomach and patting him down. He found a small Beretta .380 pistol. It was an old model, its blued finish worn off almost completely.

  Bolan unloaded the gun and tossed it away, then strapped Fayini’s wrists together with plastic zip cuffs from his war bag.

  “I recognize this name,” Bayard said. His voice was very soft, as if he had just realized something horrible. “‘Aguillard’... Cooper, this is the name of a highly placed enforcer in the Red Death.”

  “Coincidence?” Bolan asked. He began to climb up the ladder, hooking an arm under Fayini’s to pull the captured man with him. The gang member writhed in agony as he was dragged up through the sewer opening.

  “One perhaps. But I know more of these names. Moubray. Pagel. There are others. I do not recognize them all, but the ones I do are known to be members of the Red Death.”

  “Then these kids...” Bolan said. “These are ransom photos.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Bayard said. “Roelle has kidnapped the children of his rival gang. We are close to the Red Death territory here, farther away from Roelle’s headquarters. It would explain sending Fayini with dispatch to this location. The men here were perhaps to act as messengers, as well, or perhaps to provide—what is the term you use?—muscle for Fayini, protection as he distributed his photos.

  “Were I Roelle and using such diabolical methods, I would make sure these photographs circulated far and wide in this neighborhood. I would want not only the Red Death but also the residents and the customers for my drugs to know I had done this. ‘Mess with Roelle, and he will steal your children and hold them, to do with as he will, unless you comply.’”

  “What will the Red Death do?” Bolan asked. “Will they respond?”

  “They may well,” Bayard said. “They may attack Roelle’s headquarters, the one place he would keep the children. It is where he is strongest. A block of flats north of here, completely owned by Roelle and controlled by his people. It is yet another area of the city the police dare not tread too heavily.”

  “So it’s going to be a slaughter,” Bolan said. “With a bunch of innocent kids trapped in the middle.”

  “The two gangs have grappled with each other for a long time. It is not surprising that Roelle would take decisive measures. But this...”

  “Do we know for certain he would hold the kids on his home turf?” Bolan asked.

  “Anywhere else would be too vulnerable,” Bayard said. “He must know their location will be ferreted out. There are spies and informers everywhere. No location could be kept secret for long. Once known, only strength will preserve it.”

  “Will he kill those children?”

  “He will,” Bayard said. “Without hesitation. And to show that he is merciless. The parents of the children will understand this, too. They will know that their only hope is to fight back, to take the children from Roelle if they can.”

  “We’re taking an awful lot on faith here,” Bolan pointed out.

  “I know this man,” Bayard said. “As well as any law enforcement officer in Paris can know him. I understand the gangs and how they think. You are on my ‘turf,’ as you put it, Agent Cooper.”

  “Then we’ll dump Fayini at the DCRI on the way to Roelle’s headquarters,” Bolan said.

  “This is not wise. We will be caught in the middle of a war.”

  “Story of my life.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “The entrance is there,” Bayard said. He took the compact binoculars away from his face and handed them from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat. Bolan took them and adjusted the little focus knob, surveying the end of the block.

  “When the riots happened,” Bayard began, “the burning cars? The worst was not far from here. You are deep in the heart of one of what your media would call ‘ethnic enclaves.’ There will be no help for either of us here. And we do not know for certain that Roelle is holding the children in this location.”

  Bolan swiveled in his seat to face the inspector. “You just got through telling me—”

  “I know,” Bayard said. “I am trying to discourage you. Cooper, I cannot enter that building. There are certain political realities involved here. I will not stop you if you go. And I am in your debt for supporting me in my suspicions. Fayini has been caught in the act of assaulting law enforcement officers and will now see at least some time in prison. I admire what you are doing.”

  Bolan held up the photos. “I’m going in.”

  “And as I said, I will not stop you. But I risk running afoul of delicate political agreements already in place if I step into Roelle’s lair and insert myself in this gang war. These are matters left to the denizens of this place.” He spread his hands. “I have been thinking as we drove here. You will stop nothing, Cooper. Even if you rescue the children, the gangs are vast. And if all of them fell dead at once, others would take their place.”

  Bolan shook his head. “I’m going in.”

  “But, honestly, as fierce as you are, as well armed as you are, do you believe you can triumph against an army?”

  “I can,” the Executioner said, “and I will.” He stepped out of the Peugeot. Over his shoulder, he said, “And Bayard—the car. You didn’t have agents watching it.”

  The Frenchman paused. “No,” he said.

  “They leave your car alone because you take payments from someone. You’re a known quantity. You look the other way, and they don’t hassle you when you make an appearance down here. One of those ‘delicate political agreements’ you were talking about.”

  “It is true.”

  “Were you ordered to assist me?” Bolan asked. “Or did you sniff me out in order to stop me?”

  “Everything I told you about that was true,” Bayard said, bristling. “As was everything I said and believe about your methods. I am a dedicated man, Agent Cooper. I believe in the law. I believe in maintaining peace. But a man must face reality. A man must understand that there are things that cannot be changed, not by one man alone.”

  “That’s fear talking. You should be better than that.”

  “Perhaps. But fear is a powerful emotion, Agent Cooper. It keeps a man alive.”

  “There are limits to fear,” Bolan told him. “And you’re wrong, Inspector. One man can change the world if he tries. If he fights past the fear. If he goes forward, toward the danger.”

  “Goodbye, Agent Cooper,” Bayard said. “I cannot say it has been a pleasure knowing you so briefly. But you are a brave man.”

  Bolan nodded and walked away.

  The inspector was a complex man. That complexity complicated matters somewhat. He would have to consider that on the other side of this particular mission was mercy.

  Right now those kids needed Bolan. They might be the children of vicious gang members, but they were innocents. They did not deserve to be puzzle pieces in some gang war. To say nothing of what might happen to them if the Red Death showed up and tried to dig them out. Caught in the cross fire, they would be killed just to spite the enemy gang.

  Bolan was disappointed, but not surprised, that Bayard was staying out of the fray. It was just as well. Bolan could not be entirely certain where the man’s loyalties rested if the official admitted to being on the take. There was a toughness to the inspector that Bolan could sense, something that men of action could simply intuit in each other. That made Bayard’s surrende
r to the status quo that much more disappointing. Clearly the man could do better if he chose.

  Well, the man would live his life as he believed he should, and nothing Bolan did would make Bayard’s choices for him. At least, thanks to Bayard, the Executioner knew what was going on and could do something about it. His mission to intercept terrorism in Paris and to ferret out whatever was going on with the elections was no more important than the lives of innocent children.

  The neighborhood block was typical of World War Two–era public housing: multiple stories high, of crumbling brick, with a roof that looked like slate but could be anything else. Bolan had entered the address of the building into his smartphone and now checked the message that he had gotten from the Farm. No plans on file in network, it read. Satellite photos cross-referenced to news article, attached.

  A brief news report from the previous year was appended. The overcrowded six-floor tenement, described as a “courtyard building, with no street access,” had been the scene of a fire. The layout had proved to be a problem to fire crews and rescue efforts, although Bolan got the sense from the copy that these had been slow to arrive and halfhearted in execution.

  Residents of the tenement were described as “North Africans, many of them migrant laborers.” Whether the composition of the building’s residents had shifted as Roelle consolidated his hold there, or whether he had long been there and the report was spun to be politically correct, Bolan didn’t know or care. It fit with what he knew already.

  He would likely catch hell from Brognola for the ruckus he was about to raise, but that was just something the big Fed would have to accept. Brognola knew, and Bolan made sure to emphasize from time to time, that he was an autonomous operative, not an employee of the Sensitive Operations Group or the Farm. Not anymore. Those ideas had died with...well, with someone he would remember for the rest of his life.

  The only visible entrance or exit to the block-sized tenement was a metal door at the east end. There were no sentries evident on the street. Bolan scanned the windows on the end of the building. They were clouded with years of grime. In broad daylight he couldn’t see any shadows moving within, but there would be gunners there.