by Dick Stivers
"Did you know, Eddie," the king asked, "that there have been Kintails in the House of Lords since the days of that upstart Cromwell?" The king smiled. "Of course you did," he continued. "So I think it would be a damn shame to lose a family that has been such a bear for punishment for such a long time. What I mean to say, Eddie, is that there have been Kintails in our service since the time before the Empire.
"Are you married, Eddie? No? Well, give it time. Find a fine woman, lad, someone with your mother's spirit — yes, I did know her — find that woman, lad, and give the kingdom a twenty-fifth Earl of Kintail. Oh yes, I didn't mention it, Eddie, but I'd like you to be my twenty-fourth earl. It merely involves a bit of paperwork. Are you interested?"
Later, over a second bottle of brandy, the king said, "You know, Eddie, sometimes it's quite pleasant this being a king."
When Kathleen thrust the list of instructions into his hands, the old man stiffened visibly. The Earl of Kintail knew that if the terrorists escaped Windsor Castle with their royal hostages, the queen's chances of survival worsened a hundredfold. He faced the young woman impassively and put the list back into her hands.
"I won't do it," he said. "You'll have to get another man."
"Eddie," the queen spoke gently from across the room, "do as the young woman says."
"No, ma'am," he said. The last word was drowned out by the clatter of the Uzi fired by a terrorist across the room.
Kathleen stepped over the bleeding corpse of the late earl and put the piece of paper into the hands of a horror-dazed young boy.
"Give this to the men outside," she said.
The boy who bowed to the queen and left the room, clutching the list of demands in his right hand, was the twenty-fifth Earl of Kintail.
9
Lyons, Blancanales and Corporal Phillips had chased Flynn through a warren of corridors. They saw him as he reached the Waterloo Chamber, but by the time they got there the battle was over. Blancanales had to restrain Lyons and Phillips as shots rang out within the room. Provocation now would only ensure the deaths of the innocents inside.
The three men waited by the entrance. When Phillips's radio intercepted McGowan's voice giving instructions, they pulled back from the entrance, ready to herd the released hostages farther into the private apartments and greater safety.
Two men appeared in the corridor. Instinctively the trio raised their weapons. Just as quickly they lowered them. Blancanales and Lyons recognized Gadgets, and Phillips recognized his CO, Lieutenant Colonel Carlton.
Phillips snapped off a salute to his superior which was crisply returned. The introductions among the five men were brief.
Blancanales placed Carlton's age at somewhere around thirty-five, but it could have been five years either way. The man was in magnificent condition. A quiet fire burned in the blue eyes and beneath the grime of combat there radiated a quiet strength.
Pol's assessment of the lieutenant colonel was cut short by the emergence of the young earl from the chamber. Carlton listened grimly to the boy's message. Then the hostages appeared through the wrecked east door. Carlton called to them and directed the released captives to go to the Green Drawing Room, down the Grand Corridor.
Then he spoke with Able Team.
"The bastards haven't given us a lot of time. I don't know where we'll get a coach on such short notice."
"If that's a bus you're referring to," Gadgets said, "there's one out front. Full of civilians."
"Christ, what the hell are they doing here?" the colonel exploded.
All five of them moved fast down the corridor toward the exit into the Upper Ward. By the time they reached it they were running flat out.
The scene that greeted them in the Upper Ward was organized bedlam. Bodies littered the courtyard — mostly British, but some terrorists as well. The dead were covered in an assortment of blankets. The living were being tended to in the darkness by a corps of civilians.
Near the collapsed Norman Gate, civilians and soldiers worked to move the rubble and free those trapped beneath it. Their efforts were directed by a figure familiar to Able Team, Geoffrey Hall.
Seeing the three Americans, the old man walked briskly over to them and nodded at the bus.
"Best that I could throw together on short notice," he announced. "After our talk this afternoon, I laid in some supplies and borrowed this motorcoach. I thought we might be able to help in the cleanup. From the looks of things, I gather it's not going too well for us."
The stench of burned flesh permeated the night air. The Americans headed for the bus.
Gadgets quickly slithered under the coach to attach something there. He emerged a moment later. "Standard tracking device," he muttered to Hall.
Only moments later Flynn appeared in the Upper Ward. As he passed by the ruins of the King George IV Gate, soldiers and civilians stopped their rescue work to stare at the strutting terrorist. He matched their stares with his own. Uneasily, the British turned back to their tasks.
Flynn reached the bus and checked it out. He put himself behind the wheel and started the engine. He checked the gauges, found a nearly full tank of gasoline.
He radioed the all-clear sign to Kathleen McGowan and the other terrorists inside the Waterloo Chamber.
The group of hostages made its way to the bus under the watchful eyes of Able Team, Phillips, Carlton and Hall.
"We've lost this one," Phillips murmured.
"The battle only, my friend," Blancanales soothed as the bus pulled away. "Those bastards haven't won this war by a long shot."
10
Leo Turrin had lost all track of time since the snatch. He knew only that he had been taken from the cement room and locked in a small bedroom. No furniture except the bed on which he lay. The window faced a row of other buildings and was barred.
He knew also that he hurt.
Angry red welts on his chest marked where the electrodes had been applied. His muscles ached from the spasms the charges had induced.
Shillelagh's electronic voice had droned on and on, the questions coming at him from all sides. Leo was interrogated by a master. He had been near breaking when two burly men came in through the door behind him, untied him, and dragged him to this room.
He did not know why the questioning had stopped, but he knew that if it started again, he was as good as dead.
He had to escape, and quickly.
The room was no more than twelve feet square, a Spartan cell. Ventilation was provided by a single duct above the door, its grating out of reach, the duct passage far too narrow for escape anyway. The door itself was sturdy, locked on the outside, guarded by a sentry in the corridor beyond.
Leo Turrin was not going anywhere.
The single piece of furniture, a metal cot on which he sat, was hard, unyielding. It reflected his pain, the crazy-quilt of throbs and aches that covered every fiber of his being. Sitting rigid on the cot, acutely conscious of the bare wire mesh beneath him, Leo held himself immobile, shunning any movement that might aggravate his injuries and amplify the pain.
Bastards could have given me a mattress, he groused. Even as the thought took shape he realized there was no time for sleeping or for licking wounds.
Survival was the top priority, and that meant getting out. But how? A rapid visual scan confirmed his first impression of the holding cell: it was a goddamned Mob-style warehouse, plain and simple, with no loopholes even for a man at full capacity. The single, caged bulb overhead illuminated every corner, leaving nothing to the prisoner's imagination, showing him remorselessly that his predicament was hopeless. There was nothing he could use to forge a weapon, an escape tool.
He still wore shoes and socks, slacks, but his torturers had relieved him of his belt and shoestrings — anything that might have served him in the cause of self-defense or suicide.
They wanted him alive and functioning — at least enough to understand and answer questions. Turrin knew they were not through with him by any means. They would be back, a
nd he could not hold them off forever by the force of will alone. Eventually he would break, or he would die. Unless he could devise a method of escape.
Fat chance, the wounded warrior thought. They haven't even got a keyhole I can crawl through.
He changed positions gingerly, the effort costing him, and something clanked against his heel beneath the cot. It moved, retreating several inches, scraping over the linoleum with a familiar kind of sound.
Now, what the hell…
He doubled over, peering beneath the cot. It was an empty coffee can, the two-pound size, and Leo had a hunch he had found his makeshift toilet.
On command, his bladder started nagging for attention. Turrin grimaced at the thought of standing up, but Mother Nature had the con and she was calling all the shots. Right now the urge of his bladder was everything, its swift relief his sole objective.
Uncertain that his legs would hold him, Leo compromised by perching on a corner of the cot. With coffee can between his knees, he urinated painfully, relaxing by degrees until the throbbing in his bladder had receded, giving way to other, more persistent pains. About to tuck the can away beneath the bed, he glanced involuntarily inside — and saw the blood that mingled with his urine.
I'm dying here, he thought. Mack Bolan ain't around to help me this time....
He had never really thought of Bolan as a savior — though the gutsy blitz artist had saved his ass with frequency enough to qualify by any standard. Going on a lifetime now, Turrin had grown used to thinking of the hellfire warrior, Able Team's mentor, as his best friend, someone to fight and die for if the need arose.
They had not started out as friends, of course. Far from it. They had sworn to kill each other in those days, when Mack Bolan was a soldier freshly home from Nam and taking on another holy war — this time against the Mafia, which Leo Turrin served. It had been close, too frigging close for comfort, right; but after Bolan learned of Turrin's otherrole, his undercover status with a secret federal strike force targeting the Mob, the two men had reached a grim accommodation that had blossomed into spiritual kinship.
And Mack Bolan had been there when Leo needed him, damn right. In Philly, when a double-cross by Don Stefano Angeletti came within a hair of canceling the Turrin ticket — or in Pittsfield, when the war had come full circle with a vengeance! Augie Marinello's boys had stumbled onto Leo's deadly secret, and a life more precious to him than his own — sweet Angelina's — had been hanging in the balance until Bolan tipped the scales. If not for him…
Enough, goddammit.
This time out it was a solo hand for Leo, and he would have to play the cards as they were dealt to him. He could not raise the ante, but he could sure as hell refuse to fold. He had not joined the game to lose, and if it washed out that way in the end, it would not be because he opted for surrender.
Although Leo Turrin did not have the Man in Black to back his play this time, he was not precisely on his own. He had a righteous anger in him, now that he had seen his likely fate spelled out in blood, and there was always that something else — his unshakable belief in justice.
Sure, however outdated that might sound to certain sage philosophers or armchair liberals, for Leo Turrin, justice was the center of it all. He had done time in Vietnam, enlisted with the federal strike force, finally joined Mack Bolan's everlasting war — and all because he believed unswervingly that strong men armed could make a difference. You couldstrike a blow for what was right and fair, for what was just, by God.
And if you got your arms lopped off in the attempt, well then, you started kicking ass until the bastards took your legs away.
Leo Turrin smiled, aware that his condition and situation hardly made him a champion player.
"Oh, piss," he said wearily.
He glanced down at the can between his feet again, saw red and, in his mind's eye, something else. More softly now, almost with reverence, he spoke the oath again.
Oh, piss.
* * *
At first, the sentry thought he was imagining the sound. A muffled groaning, low, insistent, it demanded his attention like the still-small voice of conscience, long ignored. It came from somewhere close at hand, perhaps inside his skull.
But, no. The groaning was an actual sound, externalized. It issued from behind the door he was assigned to guard.
The sentry cocked his head, one ear almost against the door. No question, it was the prisoner. And he was suffering by the sound of it.
The sentry had observed the captive when they brought him in, and he recognized the signs. The guy was holding up but only just, and from his look, another session like the last would finish him. If the last one had not finished him already.
He was marked for death, this stranger, but the sentry could not let him die just yet. It was his job to keep the enemy confined, secure — to keep him breathing, if it came to that. And he could not afford to let the prisoner check out before his time. If the inquisitors were cheated of their game, they might go shopping for replacements — starting with the man who let the quarry slip away.
His key was in the lock before the sentry hesitated, mulling possibilities. The hostage might be dying. Or he might be waiting just beyond the door, to spring a trap.
With what?
He had no weapons, that was certain, and his injuries must necessarily have sapped his strength. On balance, any small resistance he might offer would be easily overcome.
The sentry frowned, released the strap that held his Colt revolver snug inside his holster. No sense taking chances, even with a man who had one foot inside the grave.
A dying man had nothing left to lose. The sentry, on the other hand, had everything.
* * *
From his position on the floor, curled up into a fetal ball beside the cot, he heard the sentry coming. Leo had his back turned toward the door. He charted the gunner's movements by his footsteps on the bare linoleum.
He heard the door open. His enemy was now over the threshold, maybe ten feet distant.
Still too far.
He waited.
"What's the trouble?"
Leo forced another moan. He was only half pretending now. The pain was real enough, for damn sure.
Footsteps, and the gunner closed the gap between them by another yard.
Not close enough.
"What is it?"
Leo recognized the edge behind the words. It spoke of tension. A false move now might set the guy off before he got in range, spoil everything.
The hostage groaned again. With feeling.
The sentry was beside him now, the hard toe of a boot against his aching ribs. Leo hunched his shoulder forward, half feigning nausea and sheltering the rancid-smelling coffee can he held tucked in against his chest. A length of heavy wire, which he had freed with difficulty from the cot, was wrapped around his other fist, with seven rigid inches of it thrust between his fingers.
"Speak up, there."
The boot swung in for emphasis and Leo winced, released another realistic moan. When he replied, he kept it breathless, barely audible.
"I need a doctor… hemorrhaging inside… get help."
He prayed the soldier would not panic and actually go to seek assistance. If the gunner weakened now and showed him too much mercy, he was finished.
Leather — boots and gunbelt — creaked as the sentry crouched beside him, reaching out to place a hand upon his shoulder.
"Let me have a look."
And Leo let him have it. He was already moving as the hostile hand began to roll him over on his back. His right hand whipped the coffee can around and flung its bloody contents into startled eyes.
The sentry tumbled backward, snarling, one hand clawing at his holstered weapon while the other sought his eyes. Off balance, gagging on the blood and urine that had found its way into his mouth, the gunner landed heavily on his back and missed his draw.
He never got a second chance.
With agile desperation, Leo Turrin lunged, with ev
ery tortured muscle in his body crying out, and suddenly he was astride the sentry's heaving chest.
Turrin struck with deadly accuracy at the gunner's throat, his wire lance slashing, penetrating. Razor-tipped and ice pick rigid, it bored through skin and muscle, grating past the larynx, reaming on until his knuckles, slick with blood, were tight against the sentry's jaw. A string of fierce convulsions racked the dying soldier's frame, and Leo rode him like a broncobuster, clinging with his knees, refusing to be thrown.
The sentry took some time to die, his struggles fading gradually, and then renewed for just an instant at the end, as if his dying brain believed a final savage effort could reverse the lethal damage, make it right. When he collapsed, the end was sudden, absolute, and Leo Turrin felt himself alone again inside the holding cell.
He rolled away, unmindful of the pain now, concentrating on the task at hand. His adversary's weapon had dislodged itself and lay beside him, inches from his lifeless fingers. Another moment, and he might have reached it, might have pressed the muzzle into Leo's side, and…
Turrin picked up the weapon and weighed it in his hand. It was a Colt Python, .357 Magnum, capable of dropping man or moose at any range within a hundred yards. He broke the cylinder and checked the weapon's load, discovering the sentry had kept the hammer down on an empty, leaving five rounds primed and ready.
Leo smiled. The sentry was, had been, a cautious man. No taking chance with the almost nonexistent possibility of misfires. It was fortunate that he had been less careful on the major points, or else.
Beyond his kill, the door stood open, irresistible. The wounded soldier rummaged for coins in the dead man's pockets, then got to his feet and stepped across the prostrate body, moving toward the vacant doorway and the corridor beyond.
Leo found the stairs. He descended them slowly, listening for any sound. He was in the main hallway of a small house. The furnishings were simple but spoke of money.
