Terror Ballot

by Don Pendleton

  “We are not going to outrun them,” Bayard said. The motorcycles began trying to flank them. Bolan knew as well as the inspector that this could lead nowhere good. The men on the bikes would begin firing into the rear tires of the SUV and bring it to a halt, then fire away at the men inside. Bayard took evasive action, causing the SUV to yaw from side to side on shocks that were not designed for such violent maneuvers.

  “Oncoming traffic!” Bolan warned.

  Bayard saw it and overcompensated. The SUV nearly went up on two wheels, but the inspector was able to bring it back under control again.

  “This is not good,” Bayard said.

  “On your left, on your left!” Bolan gritted out.

  “I see it,” Bayard said, narrowly missing an older Peugeot. Just then, one of the motorcycles took advantage of the opening and surged past the Citroën SUV. “Mon Dieu! He is going to—”

  The motorcycle headed straight for a passenger car that was coming in the opposite direction. Bayard floored the gas pedal and succeeded in bringing the SUV alongside the bike. He rolled down his window and began shouting at the driver.

  When he looked back up he realized his mistake.

  The road was too narrow, the distance too short. There was no way to stop the ES terrorist on the motorcycle from striking the passenger vehicle that was coming. It was a small car, some sort of mini-import. If the vehicles struck head-on, innocents would be killed.

  Mack Bolan could not permit that.

  The soldier reached over and shoved the steering wheel with one hand.

  The Citroën struck the motorcycle, pushing it out of the direct path of the oncoming car. There was still a collision, but it was not as severe. Bayard glared at Bolan but brought the SUV to a halt next to the other two vehicles. Bolan was immediately out of the SUV with his Glock in hand.

  The man on the motorcycle was now pinned beneath his vehicle. The roar of the other pursuing motorbikes was very loud as they surrounded the crash scene. Bolan did not waste any time. He went to the fallen bike and put a bullet in the head of the man beneath it. The terrorist had been reaching for a holstered pistol strapped to the fairing of the motorcycle.

  Bolan swiveled, went to one knee and engaged the other motorcyclists.

  The ES terrorists split up, moving left and right around the SUV, using it as a barricade. Bayard unlimbered his .38 and took cover behind his vehicle’s engine block. Bullets struck the hood. The motorcyclists had MAT-49 submachine guns and were doing their best to empty the magazines.

  “They must have gotten a good deal on those things,” Bolan muttered.

  “What?” Bayard shot back.

  “Nothing. Check the car! I’ll cover you!”

  Bayard nodded. He went to the vehicle and took up a protective position by it.

  “Cooper!” the inspector shouted after a moment. He took a shot at one of the terrorists and succeeded in scoring a hit. Another of the cyclists took the man’s place on the far end of the hastily parked SUV.

  “What have you got?” Bolan shouted back.

  “I have a man, his wife and their fifteen-year-old daughter,” Bayard said. “The husband is having chest pains. I believe he may be having a heart attack!”

  “Call for medical evac,” Bolan said. “Can you get a hospital chopper in here?”

  “I can,” Bayard said. “But I must guide them to me. What about you?”

  “I’ll take this party down the road,” Bolan replied. He ran for the Citroën.

  “Cooper!” Bayard shouted. “Cooper! Wait!”

  “No time!”

  The Executioner shot another terrorist before making the driver’s side of the SUV. Bullets pocked the driver’s door. Bolan ignored the slugs ripping holes in the seats around him, put the vehicle in gear and slammed his combat boot onto the accelerator.

  He needed to make sure the ES terrorists would follow him, not stay to exchange fire with Bayard. He hauled the steering wheel over and cut a tight circle, burning rubber with the SUV’s all-season tires, and targeted the motorcycles. The Citroën crashed into first one, then another, sending the men aboard them falling and diving for cover.

  The wheels bounced and the SUV bucked as Bolan crushed one of the gunmen under the vehicle.

  Bolan rolled down his window. Glock in hand, he sprayed out most of a magazine into the scattered ES gunmen. Two of them fell, never to stand again. He deliberately drove the SUV over one of the corpses to anger the other ES troops.

  His calculated act of disrespect produced the desired outcome. The remaining ES gunners were in a rage by the time they caught up with him farther down the road.

  The GPS pinged. Bolan glanced at it. Apparently he was getting very close to this destination, but he had to deal with the men chasing him, the men who had been lying in wait to ambush him.

  They were clearly ES operatives. That meant some part of the ES was alive and well, which meant his mission was not as far along as he had believed it to be. That pointed to a hole, a miscalculation somewhere along the way.

  No plan survived first contact with the enemy, he reminded himself. Talking to Tessier was now more important than ever. The digital expert was the only lead Bolan had, the only thread he could pick up to put him back on task. He was accustomed to these moments. They occurred in many battles, in many campaigns. The key was to be as flexible as possible, to adapt to new adversities in order to turn them into opportunities.

  He spared a look behind him and almost lost control of the SUV when another stream of bullets walked up the middle of the Citroën from outside. The dashboard was struck repeatedly, drawing a squealing metallic noise from just beyond the firewall. The dash fan had been hit apparently. The scraping noise was an automotive banshee under the Citroën’s hood.

  The GPS had not been hit.

  Bolan was grateful for that. He noted the location ahead. He was almost on top of his target. One of the ES motorcyclists pulled up alongside him, leveling a Makarov pistol, and Bolan swung the wheel hard. The Citroën crashed into the motorcycle and sent the driver to the pavement in a screaming, ripping, bloody mess. Bolan guided the SUV back into the center of the road.

  The target address was now directly ahead of him.

  Crushing the brake pedal beneath his boot, he succeed in stopping the SUV so suddenly that one of the remaining ES bikers crashed into the back of the Citroën. Bolan swiveled and, still in the driver’s seat, extended the Glock. He fired through the opening of the broken hatchback and took the faltering biker through the right eye socket. Then Bolan rolled out of the Citroën.

  Steam hissed from the SUV’s engine. It was pocked and starred with bullet holes. Most of its glass had been broken out. The left rear tire was going flat before Bolan’s eyes; a nick from a bullet had eventually become a leak.

  The last pair of ES bikers rolled to a stop some distance from the Citroën. That was smart. They probably knew that, protected by the engine block of the SUV, Bolan could shoot them down as they approached on the bikes. There was no advantage to using the vehicles and much danger, so the two hardmen ditched their machines and approached on foot in a half crouch. They were still far enough away that Bolan was largely concealed behind the Citroën. They were gambling, he suspected, that they could get abreast of the SUV with their submachine guns and spray the interior before Bolan could mount an effective resistance.

  The Glock 19 was a compact version of the Glock 17, the weapon that had seen the introduction of the Austrian weapon to America. While not a “true” compact weapon in that there were many who considered the Model 19 a more comfortable full-sized pistol, it was no sniper’s tool. To fire precision shots at long ranges with the Glock required a man with considerable skill as a marksman, as its maximum range was roughly fifty yards, depending on windage.

  Mack Bolan was one of the wo
rld’s best.

  He took a deep breath, let out half and held the rest. With his arms extended over the hood of the Citroën, he lined up the triple-dot pattern tritium night sights of the Glock on the first of the approaching targets. The Glock’s trigger pull was notoriously light, it’s “safe action” built for rugged performance. The weapon had never been intended for what he was asking it to do.

  The Glock barked once.

  The shot cored through the chin of the closer of the two terrorists, blowing apart his lower jaw, dropping him where he stood. His partner opened up, blazing away on full automatic with another MAT-49, charging the SUV. Bullets sang a metallic symphony along the body of the abused Citroën.

  Bolan dropped to one knee, where he crouched before the grille of the vehicle. The angle was poor. He would need to leave the cover of the vehicle if he was to line up the shot. On one knee, he crab-walked from beyond the shadow of the truck.

  The terrorist’s weapon stopped firing. It was empty. He stopped moving and, almost comically, looked down at the submachine gun as if it had betrayed him.

  Bolan pulled the trigger of his Glock.

  The weapon did not fire. Without thinking, he slapped the magazine, ran the side back and noted the unfired round that flew over his shoulder when he racked the pistol. He acquired his target again and, as his arms reached full extension in a two-hand grip, he pulled the trigger—

  Again, nothing happened.

  Catastrophic malfunctions were rare in modern service weapons, especially those as reliable as the Glock autopistols, but they did occur. Bolan did not know the provenance of this borrowed weapon. He had no idea how many rounds it had fired, whether it had been properly maintained, or if it had a history of misfires. It was possible the firing pin had broken; excessive dry firing in training could produce such a malfunction over time.

  The ES man yelled a battle cry, dropped his weapon and drew a wicked knuckle-guard knife from a sheath on his belt. He charged again, heading straight for Bolan, determined to put the blade of the massive black-coated trench knife in the soldier’s body.

  Bolan still held his pistol and, as the ES man came into range, he used it as a club, bashing the charging terrorist’s temple with the heavy metal slide. The enemy ripped off his ski mask, revealing swollen, Neanderthal-like features. The terrorist was a large, powerful man sporting a blond crew cut. He had a teardrop tattoo on one cheek.

  “I cut you,” he said in English.

  The heavy knife slashed patterns in the air, which Bolan managed to evade. The two men began circling each other. As large as Bolan was, the ES man was larger. In terms of raw strength and reach, the terrorist had the advantage.

  “You’re finished,” Bolan said quietly. “The ES is broken. Get gone, and I won’t follow you.”

  The terrorist grinned. “I cut you,” he repeated.

  Bolan lunged. He shoved the pistol forward as if he were about to shoot it, but instead of pulling the now useless trigger, he smashed the barrel of the gun into the ES man’s eye socket. The blow was hard enough to drive the slide back.

  The terrorist screamed and dropped to one knee by the side of the road.

  Bolan took a moment to survey the road in front of the target house. There had been no other traffic, but that could not last, not this relatively close to Paris. Sooner or later a citizen would see what was happening and call in the cops, if Bayard’s call for a medical evac did not already prompt a law enforcement response. Bolan didn’t have long to conduct his interview with Tessier before things got uncomfortable. On both knees now, the terrorist wailed. His hands were cupped over his injured eye.

  Bolan threw an outside crescent kick that caught the injured man under the chin. He collapsed on the pavement, out cold. That was good enough for now. Bolan rolled him over and took a trusty plastic zip-tie cuff from his pocket. He had lost his Kissinger-supplied war bag and supplies, but Bolan still had a few items.

  Satisfied that enemy resistance had been fought to zero, Bolan discarded his Glock, walked to the corpse of the other man he had sniped with the pistol and took up the man’s MAT-49. There was a spare magazine in the dead man’s belt. He took it, loaded it into the vintage French weapon and chambered a round.

  He took up a position next to the front door of Tessier’s home. Rapping on the door, he prepared himself to be greeted by a hail of gunfire or the boom of a shotgun blast. That had happened often enough over the years that he had become accustomed to it. It was almost a surprise when no such violent response came.

  He tried the door handle. It moved. The door swung open.

  Cautiously Bolan entered the home.

  The entryway opened to a living area that was filled with clutter. Most of it was electronics related. Some of it was recording media, such as disks and even a stack of magnetic tapes. There were boxes for the equipment, discarded cameras and microphones, and lots of wrappers for various fast-food restaurants, including one that was popular in the United States. No matter where you went in the world, apparently, you could gorge yourself on the burgers of a U.S. chain.

  His sixth sense for combat was screaming at him. Something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Finally he found the locked door off the kitchen area. When it wouldn’t budge, he kicked it open with one well-placed snap from his combat boot.

  Tessier was sitting in front of his computer.

  The arrangement was an elaborate one. No less than eight separate flat-screen monitors, two or three deep, were arrayed around the semicircular desk. There were at least three keyboards—each with its own mouse on the desktop—sitting in tiered stands. The monitors were switched on, but displayed nothing. No Input blinked on one of them.

  “Tessier,” Bolan said. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

  The French digital expert made no response. Bolan reached out and, very carefully, turned the chair around. It squeaked as it swiveled.

  Tessier stared in openmouthed horror. His eyes looked at nothing. His skin was fish-belly white, almost blue. A single gunshot wound, directly over his heart, had left his shirt stained crimson from chest to waist. He had died in the chair. From the look on his face, he might never have understood why or how death had come for him.

  Bolan sensed someone behind him.

  He did not hear the man moving behind him; there was no telltale motion in his peripheral vision; he had no idea what had alerted him to the presence. He spun, his finger clenching the trigger of the MAT-49 as he turned.

  He tasted blood when a gun barrel hit him in the face.

  He felt himself falling, felt the blackness closing in, felt—if only barely—the floor come up to meet him. A man, the edges of his face blurring in Bolan’s vision, peered at the soldier from above.

  Bolan tried and failed to speak the man’s name.

  It was Gerard Levesque.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Mack Bolan opened his eyes, he was lying on his back on a weight bench in what he thought to be the rear room of Tessier’s country home. Bolan’s jacket had been removed and dumped on the floor next to him. His wrists had been duct-taped to the legs of the weight bench. His feet were held immobile by more tape that bound his lower legs to the bench itself. He tested them, trying not to be obvious about it. They held fast.

  “Ah,” a voice said. “He is awake.”

  Gerard Levesque’s face once more appeared, looming over Bolan as the terrorist leader stood above him.

  “Levesque,” Bolan said. “You look pretty good for a dying man who shot himself in the head.”

  “Honestly,” said Levesque, “I had no idea there existed in the world men as honorable as you, Agent Cooper. It was the perfect lever to use against you. The only lever, I am quite sure...although we will find out just where your tolerances truly lie before this day ends. Perhaps you should have
looked for an exit wound instead of just gazing at my slumped form.”

  “So what are you doing here, Levesque?”

  “What am I doing here alive?” the terrorist leader asked. He wore a leather M65-style field jacket. From inside it he removed a silver cigarette case and opened it. He took a black clove cigarette from this, put it in his mouth and lit it using a small silver butane torch built into the case. Inhaling deeply, he paused before blowing a cloud of smoke into the air above Bolan’s head. “Or what am I doing here in the home of the late, unlamented Edouard Tessier?”

  “Take your pick,” Bolan said.

  “Cooper, I do not think you realize how valuable you have been to me. A man of my power, a man who commands a force with the strength of my organization, must always be on guard. I must always consolidate and jealously defend that power. A man I trust to command my troops, to operate my affairs one day...he can become a traitor the next. You know the story of Judas, yes?”

  “You’re talking about your boy Lemaire.”

  “Yes,” Levesque said. “Judas killed his leader because that leader disappointed him. That leader was not the man Judas needed him to be. Lemaire’s problem was something similar. I assume it was you who killed him? Personally, by your own hand?”

  “Yes,” Bolan said. There was no reason to lie about it. The knowledge of who had removed Lemaire from the earth would not help Levesque in any way.

  “I would expect nothing less. You are an elusive man, Agent Cooper, but I have contacts in the intelligence community. An impressive record follows you. Many stories—most of which cannot be confirmed—have you everywhere at once, traveling the globe and making a great deal of trouble for...well, for men such as me.”

  “You know what they say about believing everything you read,” Bolan said. As Levesque grinned down at him, he searched the room with his peripheral vision. Levesque was flanked by two uniformed, ski-masked men of the ES. There were other operatives in the house, too; Bolan could hear them moving around.