Terror Ballot

by Don Pendleton

  They would be wondering who on earth had the audacity to approach, openly and without fear, and think he would not be seen. It was entirely possible that, since solidifying their control here, no one had dared confront Roelle in his lair. And why would they? It would be suicide to try. A man like Roelle ruled his fiefdom through fear and violence. He counted on that fear, needed it, traded in it.

  Bolan brought up the M16 with its M203 slung beneath the barrel and jacked a round into the launcher.

  Slow response time. The watchers at the windows should have seen that, should have hurried to react to it. Bolan was prepared to dodge, to duck and weave; he was expecting heavy resistance and had come loaded for bear.

  The perimeter of the building would hold nothing of value. Predators, when building their redoubts, did so on an instinctive level. The hostages and anything else to which Roelle assigned high value would be buried deep in the tenement, somewhere heavily guarded, behind multiple barriers. That meant there was nothing to stop Mack Bolan from punching a hole in the outside wall.

  Time to open the dance.

  Bolan’s 40 mm grenade hit the door and blew it inward with a good chunk of the building. The blast reverberated across the street facing the tenement. Sheets of glass, blown to fragments, rained down onto the pavement at Bolan’s feet.

  The return gunfire started.

  The first few shots were tentative, as if the gunmen were trying it on for size. Bolan was already close enough to the building that they couldn’t hit him without hanging from the windows and shooting straight down. Bolan cleared the rubble of the door with a burst from the M16 against his shoulder.

  He emerged from a cloud of dust, surveying the layout before him. With no floor plans available through the Farm—which was not uncommon, as many municipal networks did not include digital building plans—he would have to improvise as he went. That meant clearing each room to which he could gain access, working his way from floor to floor. But on the periphery of the tenement it was not necessary to search every cell and chamber of the maze, for again, the valuable hostages would be secured deeper within the building.

  The hallway stretched before him. Doorways punctuated the corridor on either side. The walls were probably plaster, given the construction’s apparent age. The load-bearing walls would be concrete, he suspected. Overall the interior of the building would afford more protection from bullets than modern drywall construction, but that was not saying much.

  Doors opened on the left and the right ahead. The soldier wondered if perhaps Roelle’s gang were coordinating with phones or two-way radios; the attack was well timed. From both sides the shooters aimed their MAT-49 submachine guns in Bolan’s direction, unleashing long, undisciplined bursts that went well high. Plaster dust was ripped from the ceiling above.

  Bolan dropped to one knee, aimed carefully and punched a 3-round burst through the neck of the left-hand gunner. Swiveling smoothly Bolan punched another 5.56 mm round through the forehead of man on the other side. The right-hand man unloaded his weapon into the floor, tearing up stained carpet and the hardwood floor beneath, as his finger clenched on the trigger.

  Bolan kept going.

  The dead men had dark skin and sported a variety of tattoos. Their clothes were a mixture of expensive and threadbare. Criminal chic. One of the dead men sported lines of ink on his neck, trailing across the corpse’s throat, spelling “Suffering” in French. Bolan was definitely in the right place.

  At the end of the corridor he headed toward the stairwell, then stopped, turned and hit the floor. From the chambers at the opposite end, a trio of gunmen piled into the hallway. It didn’t matter whether these men, too, had been detailed to watch the street or were simply on hand when the gunfire erupted. Bolan raked the barrel of his assault rifle from left to right, stroking the trigger repeatedly, blowing the shooters’ ankles out from under them. When they hit the floor, he perforated them from front to back, aiming for their skulls, putting them down for good.

  Up once more, the soldier snapped a kick into the fire door at the stairwell. The door, like the walls on either side of him, was covered in layers of graffiti. The effect was almost psychedelic. As he walked, his boots crushed fast-food wrappers, broken glass and aluminum beer cans.

  The Executioner almost missed the trip wire.

  The silvery thread was stretched taut across the third step leading up. On one side the wire was attached to a bent nail rammed into the wall. On the other side, a soup can just large enough to accommodate a vintage World War Two pineapple grenade was duct-taped to the wall. The wire was wrapped around the body of the grenade, beneath the spoon; pulling it free of the soup can would release the spoon and cause the grenade to detonate on the stairs.

  The booby trap was incredibly dangerous. There was no way a grenade that old could be considered reliable. It might not explode at all when the spoon released, or it might explode simply while sitting there. The presence of the trap told Bolan much about what to expect of the gang leader and his people.

  The soldier heard steps in the corridor behind the fire door. Bending, he snagged the trip wire, pulled the grenade free and watched the spoon clatter to the steps. He yanked open the door with the grenade still on its wire. The other end of the wire snapped under the force of his pull.

  He was not sure where the gang members in the hallway had been hiding, but it didn’t matter. He saw their eyes widen as he whipped the grenade through the open door. Then he slammed the fire door shut and hurried up the stairs.

  The explosion behind him made his ears pop and threw the fire door into the stairwell. The door was stained black and red. It steamed as it gouged a black line in the floor.

  Bolan checked the second and third floors as he ascended the stairwells. These were blackened and scorched from within, their corridor doorways sealed with plywood nailed haphazardly across the burned openings. Evidently the fire that had occurred here had taken out a portion of the building, and repairs had not been attempted. He moved on.

  His adversaries were waiting for him on the fourth floor. As Bolan entered the corridor, they rushed him, coming at him in a wall of running, screaming, shooting hostiles. There was no logic or reason to it; they were as likely to shoot one another—as they ran the corridor with guns blazing—as they were to hit their target. Bolan saw the charge and hit the floor on his back, pointing the M16 between his legs. He emptied his weapon’s magazine, neutralizing at least four of the oncoming gunmen as their rounds scorched the air above his face.

  The fifth man fell on him.

  The blow to Bolan’s ribs nearly drove the breath from his lungs. The gang member was an enormous man, with black skin and a shaved skull. He wore black leather pants and a vest with no shirt. His weight pressed against the soldier, pinning the M16 to Bolan’s chest, making it impossible for him to draw the Beretta 93R from its shoulder holster.

  He didn’t need to.

  His right hand found the Desert Eagle in its Kydex inside-the-waistband holster, where it rode on his strong side behind his hip. He drew the weapon and, with the heavy triangular snout of the hand cannon pressed against his body and angled into the enemy, Bolan pulled the trigger.

  The .44 Magnum round was muffled beneath the gang member’s body, but the effect was immediate. The huge man jerked as the round tore a tunnel through his abdomen and out his back, digging through vital organs, ending his life with brutal finality. Bolan shoved off the dead man, rolling the corpse aside, feeling the moist warmth where the man’s blood had begun to soak through the front of Bolan’s shirt.

  It was a familiar feeling.

  There were more shooters, hiding in the doorways farther down the hall, and they opened up on the big American as he tried to rise to a sitting position. Bolan simply carried his motion through, diving into a forward roll, popping up at the end of the roll to come up on one knee with
the Desert Eagle leveled. The enormous weapon thundered, rocketing heavy hollowpoint slugs through the space between him and the gunmen.

  He did not target the door openings. He targeted the walls near the openings, where he calculated the gunmen would duck behind cover. The slugs bored through the plaster, leaving craters in their wake, splashing the doorways with flecks of blood and bone.

  Screams echoed through the corridor.

  The Executioner walked the blood-soaked hellscape that he had created, his combat boots leaving crimson prints in the creaking wooden floors. Something moved in the doorway to his right. He swiveled and triggered a round that cored through the throat of the gang member as the gunner tried to level an ancient bolt-action rifle at him. The weapon hit the floor.

  Bolan reached the end of the hallway, emerging in the opposite stairwell. Below him the access had been blocked by a pile of old metal bed frames. Above, numerous warnings in French had been spray-painted on the walls in bright red against splotches of white. Obviously he was closing in on Roelle’s sanctum, or at the very least nearing something the gang held more securely than the lower levels.

  The door leading into the next floor was rigged with a bomb.

  Bolan saw it easily; it was meant to be visible, to dissuade intruders. Several sticks of what looked like ancient, sweating dynamite were simply taped to the fire door. Wires led from the dynamite to an electronic detonator of some kind. Unless Bolan missed his guess, the detonator was a modern mercury switch. That made a certain sense. Opening the door would disturb the switch and detonate the explosives.

  Bolan examined the bomb closely. He was keenly aware of the crosshairs on the back of his neck. An enemy could easily take advantage of his focus on the bomb to attack him from behind, if he were not careful. He listened intently as he examined the bomb. Any sound from the stairs below him would prompt him to brace the new threat.

  He reloaded the Desert Eagle almost without thinking about it. His muscles were well trained by years of experience. The weapon was an extension of his body; firing it was as natural to him as breathing and required almost as little conscious consideration.

  Bolan reached out and plucked the detonator wires from the dynamite.

  It was as simple as that. He shoved the fire door open, letting the Desert Eagle lead the way through the gap—and nearly fell to his death.

  The floor was gone. The fire that had burned the lower floors had apparently been worse on this end of the building. Where the corridor should have been was a blackened chasm, beneath which the lower floors were visible. Across the gap, where the floor had not been destroyed, a makeshift barrier of wooden pallets and scrap lumber had been erected. There were sentries here, more gang members, and when they saw Bolan, they began firing with a mixture of submachine guns, pistols and rifles.

  Bolan fell back to the stairwell long enough to holster the Desert Eagle and slam a 40 mm grenade into his launcher. Then he charged the doorway again, stopping short of the gap in the floor, launching the grenade from the M203 into the center of the opposition. The high-explosive round detonated, pelting the vicinity with wooden shrapnel. Screaming, burning men fell from the barrier to the floors below, tumbling through the holes burned in floors and ceilings.

  Bolan expended a 30-round magazine from his M16 through the broken barrier, hoping to keep down any enemies who might be lying in wait. When there were no answering shots, he reached into his war bag and produced his folding grappling hook.

  The hook was simple. It was two pieces of titanium nitride–coated steel held together with a swivel pin at the center of both limbs. He pulled the swivel pin, turned the limbs to ninety degrees and fed out the high-tension line attached to the bottom of the hook.

  There was not a great deal of line, but there was enough for his purposes. He tossed the hook through the gap and then yanked it back, waiting for it to catch on the scrap of the badly damaged barrier. When he could tug on the hook with all his weight and not dislodge it, he judged it safe. Finding an exposed beam above his head, he knotted the opposite end of the line.

  The soldier hoisted himself over the gap hand over hand, using the line to suspend himself. When he reached the opposite end, he reloaded the M16, let it fall to the end of its sling and drew his silenced Beretta machine pistol. He believed he was close to his goal now. He had spent enough time in enemy lairs to get a sense for such things.

  The corridor ended in a pair of ornate wooden doors that had obviously been brought in from somewhere else. The hinges were cobbled together, crooked and jury-rigged. The portrait of a man had been painted on both doors. He was dark-skinned, with gold teeth and incongruously blue eyes. Long dreadlocks flowed from his scalp to his shoulders. The face on the twin paintings bore a beatific grin.

  It could only be Roelle. The portraits brought to mind the giant paintings of dictators in third-world nations. Bolan paused long enough to make sure the doors were not rigged. Heavy chains and padlocks through the iron handles of the doors secured them to each other. Bolan stepped back, switched the Beretta to his left hand and drew the Desert Eagle with his right. He triggered the weapon several times, shattering the padlocks and sundering the chains.

  Bolan lashed out with his boot, kicking in the doors, smashing the flimsy internal lock that was all that remained to hold them together. The hall into which he emerged was, he surmised, overlooking the courtyard at the center of the tenement. It had probably been created by smashing out several of the interior walls and then paneling the walls to create the impression of continuity.

  Massive banners that were simply painted sheets had been hung on the walls. They bore French slogans and, frequently, the word Souffrir. At the center of the hall was a massive enclosure made of hastily nailed wood and chicken wire. Within this enclosure were maybe twenty children, huddled together under the watchful eye of several gang members acting as guards.

  At the rear of the hall was a gilded antique chair. It looked like a throne, which, Bolan realized, it most assuredly was, and was occupied by the man Bolan recognized from the paintings on the doors.

  It had to be Roelle.

  “Kill him!” the gang leader barked in French.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bolan charged the throne, dodging gunfire from the Kalashnikov and FAMAS rifles held by Roelle’s guards, until Bolan was close enough to try for a flying tackle. The shooters couldn’t target him if their leader was in the path of the gunfire. Roelle raised one hand and snapped his fingers.

  The gunmen standing at the perimeter of the room immediately trained their weapons on the enclosure full of children.

  Bolan stopped in his tracks.

  The gang leader’s face split into a wide grin. He had several gold teeth. His dreadlocks were thick and long, larger than in the paintings on the double doors. He wore what appeared to be a silk caftan. His chest was layered with gold chains; heavy gold rings adorned each of his fingers. His hands were thick and gnarled. They were the hands of a boxer.

  “They fire,” Bolan said, “and you die.”

  Roelle’s smile grew wider. “English,” he said. “And American! Are you CIA, little man? Always meddling everywhere, your Central Intelligence Agency. What is your business here, American?”

  “Those kids are keeping you alive,” Bolan said. “Free them, and I’ll walk out of here.”

  “Do you believe there is any chance you will leave here alive, American?” Roelle’s smile turned feral. “I will bring you down like a dog. I will torture you for days. You will beg me to kill you. I command an army, American. And you walk in here as one man?”

  “Your army didn’t stop me from getting this far,” Bolan pointed out. “And I’d say you’re a few men shorter than you started this morning.”

  “Enough,” Roelle roared. “No man defies me, American. All Paris fears Souffrir. They fear me because
they know I will bring them suffering and pain. Pain is power. Pain is truth.”

  “You’re a coward,” Bolan said. “A coward who hides behind children as human shields.”

  Roelle frowned. “I will give you the same honor I have given all of my enemies,” he said. “The honor I will grant the leaders of—how would you say?—the Red Dead.”

  “Death,” Bolan said.

  “Yes,” Roelle replied. “Death.” He snapped his fingers again. “Shamir! Tehrab! Put your blades to him!”

  Bolan was watching carefully; he saw Roelle’s eyes cut to each of the henchmen as he called their names. Shamir was a brute, well over six feet tall, wearing camouflage fatigue pants, combat boots and a mesh shirt. Like Roelle, he styled his hair in dreadlocks. His face was covered with a heavy beard that also obscured his neck.

  Tehrab, by contrast, was a head shorter. Where Shamir was thickly muscled, Tehrab was sinewy. His hair was close cropped, his face heavily scarred. One of his eyes was a dead, milky white. He wore black jeans, faded and ripped. His black tank top clung to him tightly.

  Both men held well-used machetes.

  “Put your guns on the floor,” Roelle said. “I will let you live if you can defeat these two.”

  No you won’t, Bolan thought. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing now. He unclipped the M16 from its single-point sling and placed it on the floor at his feet. The Beretta and Desert Eagle joined it a moment later.

  “I like mine better,” Roelle said. He held up his own weapon, a .50-caliber Desert Eagle plated in gold. He waved the barrel of the pistol almost casually. “Begin. Save your life if you can.”

  Bolan drew his combat knife.

  The two gang members circled him. Bolan bent his knees, dropping into a half crouch, his blade in front of his body. He was at a distinct disadvantage wielding his knife. The machetes were eighteen inches at least, and the men who held them would be experts in their use.