Terror Ballot

by Don Pendleton

  “Military-grade weaponry. An M16/M203, preferably. A supply of 40 mm grenades, including frag, incendiary and antipersonnel buckshot if you have it. That .44 Magnum Desert Eagle I see on the table there, provided it’s in good shape. Extra magazines for it, loaded. A Beretta 93R machine pistol and a supply of 20-round box magazines, loaded. As many loaded 5.56 mm 30-round magazines as I can carry. A small tactical flashlight if you have one, no less than 60 lumens minimum. And something for my friend. Maybe a MAC-10, plus ammo for it.”

  Levi blinked. “No knife?”

  “I have one,” Bolan said.

  Levi’s curious laughter broke across the room, shaking the massive arms dealer so hard that he nearly lost his delicate perch on his upholstered chair. Finally with much coughing and wheezing, he managed to calm himself. He snapped his fingers and one of the door guards brought him a can of beer from a cooler hidden behind Levi’s three-table desk.

  “I have one,” Levi repeated, as if it were the punch line to a hilarious joke. He sipped his beer. Bolan did not recognize the brand.

  Bayard looked from Bolan to Levi and back again. The guards at the door were fidgeting around quite a bit. Bolan had noticed it, too. This did not bode well for their chances.

  “And what you offer me?” Levi asked. “That quite an order, Belasko. Quite an order. But I can do this. If you can pay me.”

  Bolan pulled out his wad of euros. He put it on the table in front of Levi and then backed up a pace. Levi took the money, smelled it. Then he put it in his mouth and mashed it with his lips, as if he were trying to make sure it was real. Then he counted it, very carefully. Twice.

  “Not enough,” he pronounced.

  “That’s why I brought some trade items,” Bolan said. He hefted the duffel bag he and Bayard had dragged through the shantytown. He placed it as respectfully on the table as he could. Levi shoved weapons aside to make room for it, impatient to unzip it. Then he looked inside. The chopped AR with its double-drum magazine seemed to be the only thing he really noticed.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, my, Belasko. This here. I like this. Okay. I take this and these other things.” He snapped his fingers again. One of the guards disappeared and, when he returned in a few minutes, he was carrying a heavy canvas bag of his own. The bag was placed at Bolan’s feet.

  “Open it,” Levi ordered imperiously. “Everything be there.”

  Bolan glanced at Bayard, not quite believing that was possible. When he looked, though, Levi had been true to his word. Bolan began arming himself, placing loaded magazines in his musette bag, shoving the Desert Eagle—a brand new and very gaudy chromed model—in his waistband and the Beretta 93R opposite it. He hadn’t been kidding about having a knife. The switchblade was still in his pants pocket. He handed the MAC-10 and its magazines to Bayard and watched as the inspector loaded the weapon.

  Bolan slung his new M16/M203 assault rifle–grenade launcher combo and filled his shoulder bag with grenades.

  Levi watched, seemingly pleased. He was absently munching a snack cake of some kind, one of a pile next to his upholstered chair, when he started as if someone had poked him. Fishing around inside his caftan, he produced a wireless phone. The tiny slimline device looked comically small in his thick hand.

  “This here Levi,” the arms dealer said, after snapping the phone open. His eyes widened in surprise. Then he pressed a button on the phone and stared at the device. A moment later, it chimed. He pressed another button.

  “A pleasure doing business with you,” Bolan said. “We’ll be on our way now.”

  Levi held up a fat finger. “Hold up now. Here. Look this.” He thrust the phone at Bolan. There was a picture displayed on the phone’s screen.

  It was Bolan.

  The image appeared to be from a traffic camera. Levi closed the phone and tucked it away again.

  “Problem?” Bolan asked.

  “Problem,” Levi replied. “Red Spiders in charge now. I sell to them. I sell to you. I don’t care. But I live with the Red Spiders. They say I’m in the gang, I’m in the gang. Business. But I can’t let you go. Spiders business. Gotta stop you. Sorry. Keeping your money.”

  Bolan made a show of hitching his thumbs in his waistband and sighing. “That’s going to be a problem, Levi.”

  “You said yourself. You don’t mess with me. I’m a bad man.”

  “I don’t care if you’re the baddest man in the whole damn town, Levi,” the Executioner said. His tone turned darkly serious. “We’re stepping out of here under our own power. If you don’t let us walk out of here, when we do leave, we’re going to be leaving footprints in your blood.”

  Levi’s hideous face fell. His brow furrowed. He was thinking about it.

  Bolan’s hands edged closer to the butts of his weapons.

  “The DCRI has access to the traffic camera feeds,” Bayard said. “This is systemic corruption, Cooper.”

  “He is Cooper,” Levi stated. “Not Belasko. I know it.”

  “Corruption is a way of life here,” Bayard said. “It sickens me.”

  “You can’t leave,” Levi told them. He glared suddenly.

  Bolan took a step backward. “Like I said, big man,” he warned. “We’re leaving.” The words were meaningless. Levi had been given his orders by the Red Spiders, to whom he was beholden no matter what might be his personal thoughts on underworld politics in Paris. No doubt the man was kept well fed by a steady stream of gun sales to the local gangs. He would not endanger that.

  Bolan backed up until he was standing between the two sentries. They began to unsling their rifles. He looked at them. They looked nervously back at him.

  “I would run,” Bolan advised them.

  The two sentries exchanged worried glances.

  “Kill them!” Levi roared.

  Bolan yanked the guns from his waistband, extended his arms and pulled both triggers.

  The Beretta loosed a 3-round burst. Two hollowpoint rounds from the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle cracked liked thunder. The heads of the two sentries practically exploded, painting the walls of the shack with blood and gore.

  Bolan charged the fat man’s desk. He plowed through the triple table setup, upending the platforms, throwing them aside, until he was face-to-face with Levi. The arms dealer was not helpless, however. He ripped open his caftan to reveal a suicide vest ringed with cylinders of plastic explosive.

  “You can’t touch Levi!” he shouted. He raised a trigger switch connected to his vest by a wire. One big thumb was poised over the button. “This a dead-man’s switch, and when I press—”

  Bolan shot him in the face.

  The Desert Eagle blew whatever Levi had been about to say through the back of his head and out the wall of the shack.

  “Let us make like a stand of trees and depart quickly,” Bayard said.

  Bolan shot him a look. “What?”

  “Did I say it wrong, Cooper?”

  “Remind me to ask you later if you were just screwing with me,” Bolan replied. He checked the doorway. There were armed Red Spiders guards moving along the walkway leading from Levi’s shack and more on the way in response to the gunfire.

  “What is that?” Bayard asked.

  Bolan listened. It was a bell of some kind, being rung repeatedly, perhaps hit by a mallet. “Local alarm, I’m guessing. And we just triggered it. Come on.”

  The big soldier tucked away his guns and brought the M16 to his shoulder. It felt good to be behind a powerful, properly configured battle rifle again. The flat-top M16 boasted an expensive holographic sight. He crept along the walkway in a half crouch with Bayard bringing up the rear. The Frenchman’s MAC-10 was good support, capable of throwing a lot of lead very fast in close quarters.

  “Above! Above!” Bayard shouted. He aimed the machine pistol upward and, with the wire
stock braced against his shoulder, sprayed the corrugated roof of Levi’s shack, dislodging a Red Spiders guard with a revolver. The dead man crashed into an adjacent shanty and caused it to collapse in a heap. There was a lot of yelling and cursing from underneath the wreckage.

  “Cooper, which way?” Bayard asked.

  “Follow me.” Bolan ramped up to a run and poured on the speed. Gunfire crackled all around him. He raised the M16 and began firing in long, measured bursts, first to the left, then to the right, hammering away as more guards boiled out of the shanties.

  Something was wrong. What was it? He could not quite put his finger on it. Then it hit him.

  The shanties were all wrong. In the third world a settlement like this one betrayed all aspects of human life. There were lines of drying laundry. There were children playing in the muck. There were men and women going about the business that men and women have gone about for thousands of years, ranging from love to politics to simply making a living. He had seen no shops. He had seen no real activity of any kind except for guards, sealed shacks and Levi’s centralized lair.

  He had expected there to be innocents. He had expected that he would need to choose his shots very carefully to avoid catching any civilians, any bystanders, in the line of fire. It quickly became apparent that Levi and the Red Spiders had turned this little settlement into some kind of headquarters for the gang, centered around the arms dealer’s commercial activities.

  Bolan stopped. Bayard nearly crashed into him from behind. He put one hand on Bolan’s shoulder and half-turned him.

  “Cooper! Are you all right? What is it?”

  “Levi’s shack. It’s full of weapons and explosives. And this whole settlement is a Red Spiders safehouse. There are no kids here. No other people. Just gang members. That’s all we’ve seen.”

  “You’re right,” Bayard said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Cover me.”

  Bayard took up a position on Bolan’s flank. He immediately began firing measured bursts from his MAC-10 as more Red Spiders gang members closed in from all sides. They were trying to squeeze between the shacks, crawl along the roofs and sneak from one side through to the other in those shacks that had small window holes or pairs of doors. Bayard swapped magazines, pulled the bolt back and renewed his efforts.

  Bolan snapped open the M203 grenade launcher. He inserted a 40 mm incendiary grenade, closed the launcher and took careful aim as he shouldered the weapon.

  The launcher chuffed as he triggered the round.

  The grenade sailed down the walkway, threading the needle between the closest shacks and entered the open doorway of Levi’s shanty. Bolan turned, grabbed Bayard and shoved him forward.

  “Run for the exit,” Bolan instructed. “We’ll steal a car once we get there. Make distance, Inspector.”

  The explosion that erupted at their backs was not a single burst. It was a staggered, layered series of detonations, a staccato rhythm of thunderclaps that built to a crescendo as the heat from each new reaction added to the bloom of flame and light that incinerated the pitiful shanty. Whatever explosives had been stockpiled within burned a crater deep into the ground, shredding the nearby shacks and sending wooden and metal debris dozens of feet into the air. Around Bolan and Bayard, it began to rain pieces of shanties...and pieces of men.

  It was the distraction they needed. The two men made the perimeter of the settlement, and then put another two blocks between themselves and the networks of shanties. Bolan located a Peugeot that looked relatively new and had commercial courier tags, much to Bayard’s relief. Using the switchblade, Bolan cut his way into the wires under the dash, made the necessary connections and switched on the interior lights. Then he struck the ignition and got the car going. They were soon on their way.

  Behind them a pall of black smoke marked the destruction of Levi the arms dealer and the Red Spiders gangsters who had been guarding him.

  “Cooper,” Bayard said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You enjoy doing things the hard way.”

  Bolan rolled down his window. As the car sped on through the streets of Paris, headed out of the city, the Executioner allowed himself a smile.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Outside the Gaston Estate, Marseille

  The idyllic countryside outside Marseille sped by. With the window of the stolen Peugeot down, Bolan thought he could smell the Mediterranean Sea in the air. The two men had traveled in silence, for the most part, but it had been a comfortable silence. Bayard had come a long way since his earlier suspicion of Bolan. Seeing the elephant, as the saying went—getting into the thick of it and facing down the war from the inside—was enough to convert a lot of men. Bayard was a decent man at heart.

  They were discussing that fact as they neared the Gaston estate.

  “I told you,” Bayard said. “I have not always behaved as a police officer should. I have accepted certain bribes. Spread others. Used these as leverage to create a practical condition, one that I thought benefited the people in my charge. I am not a good man.”

  “Yes, you are,” Bolan said. “You’re putting it on the line to do the right thing now. Risking your life. I don’t know if that’s absolution, Inspector, but it’s as close to it as any of us get. I know a certain pilot who used to take money to look the other way. He worked for criminal syndicates for years. But when it came down to it, he realized he could do the right thing, realized he had a choice. He decided to start fighting for what’s right, and he’s been doing that ever since. He’s one of my oldest friends in the world, and I wouldn’t believe anybody who tried to tell me he’s not a good person...despite his previous failings, despite the times he looked the other way.”

  “I do not know.”

  “I do,” Bolan said. “That’s how these things work.”

  They had acquired a prepaid cell phone at a shop outside Paris. Bolan had used it to communicate with the Farm, updating them on his mission. Using a commercial express courier, Bolan had shipped Tessier’s hard drive to a drop point that the Farm’s intelligence network would access to recover it.

  The information on that hard drive would go a long way toward putting things right on the political scene, especially with Franco-American relations roiled as they were. But until that data could be processed, the Man did not want Gaston harmed in any way.

  Yet Price, Brognola, the President and Bolan all knew that rooting out Gaston, dealing him the Executioner’s brand of justice, was exactly what Mack Bolan was going to do.

  “Roadblock,” Bayard said suddenly. “Cooper, roadblock!”

  Bolan hit the brakes. The Peugeot slowed, but the police had chosen their ambush point carefully. The checkpoint was visible just around a blind curve and, behind them, another police car was moving into position to stop them. These were two uniformed policemen before them. Two cars had been parked in a V-formation, permitting only the most careful access between them.

  Bolan could not shoot the policemen any more than he could fly over them.

  “Better stop,” Bayard said. “Perhaps I can talk our way out of this.”

  “Worth a try.”

  They pulled up to the checkpoint. The uniformed men were young and nervous. The lead cop, a blond who looked like he’d never had to shave, approached the passenger side of the vehicle. Bolan worked up his most pleasant smile.

  “Good day, Officer,” Bolan said in French.

  “Step out of the vehicle, sir,” the policeman replied. “You and your traveling companion match the description of wanted fugitives. We are calling for more men. You would be wise simply to—”

  Bolan hit him in the throat.

  There was no time to argue, and they were going to be boxed in if he didn’t do something drastic. He was very careful
to pull his blow, rapping the man on the side of the neck, knocking him sprawling to the pavement. A strike there at full power could have serious consequences. As it was, the policeman was stunned, and he’d likely have a hell of a headache caused by the edge-of-hand blow to the area of the carotid artery.

  Bolan threw himself over the hood of the car. He used both feet to crash into the legs of the other cop, bringing him down to the pavement. Once he had the man there he applied a rear naked choke, folding his arms around the man’s neck and pressing the back of the policeman’s head into Bolan’s hold. It did not take long to put the cop to sleep. The soldier set him down gently.

  The third car hit its lights and a peculiar-sounding siren and began to burn pavement toward them. Bolan reached into the Peugeot, pulled out the M16 and blasted away. He managed to get two of the car’s four tires and then burned away several pieces of the car’s engine as the grille came around to face him.

  “He can do us no real harm,” Bayard said. “You will not hurt him?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t hurt them, either.” He jerked his chin to the two men on the ground. “Not that much. They’ll be fine. I can’t speak to their wounded pride.”

  Bayard moved over to the driver’s seat. “Come on, Cooper,” he said. “Let us—”

  “Make like a stand of trees?” Bolan interrupted. “I’m all for that.”

  They were very close to the Gaston estate when they heard the helicopter. Bolan leaned out the window and looked up. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “They must have radioed for air support. We’re going to have to deal with that helicopter somehow.”

  “Can the grenade launcher knock it down?” Bayard asked.

  “No, not even if they weren’t cops.”

  “But they are not cops,” Bayard said. “That is a civilian helicopter. It is not a law enforcement aircraft.”

  “Then we have bigger problems, because it’s trailing us, and it’s coming down for a run.”

  “A run?”

  “A strafing run,” Bolan explained.

  Just then, automatic gunfire raked the road on either side of them, ripping the mirror from the passenger side of the Peugeot. Bayard did his best to chart a random course, swaying left and right, but the helicopter stuck to them.