Executioner 054 - Mountain Rampage

by Pendleton, Don

  Once at the door, he moved an ammunition carton with his boot to prop the door open. He wanted his troops to have immediate access to this secret source of secondary arms and ammunition. The battle was due.

  11

  BOLAN STOOD BENEATH THE EAVES of the low building. He reached up with both hands to determine the height. No more than seven feet from the ground to the low point of the eaves. He ran his hands along the composition roofing and felt the tiny grains of rough grit against his fingertips.

  He bent slightly at the knees, then with every ounce of power in his legs, he sprang upward. For an instant Bolan feared his spring was not enough to let him straighten his arms on the roof and bring the rest of him up. The rough roofing grit bit into the palms of his hands. He hovered on the brink of failure. Shoulder muscles straining, he leaned forward into the roof to force his body upward. Then he turned his palms a full 180 degrees and raised his body onto the roof.

  As he flattened out, the chopper rose from within the compound. Once clear of the buildings the pilot slipped the machine west-ward through the night's cool, following much the same security approach he had used in landing.

  Bolan slithered across the roof. He took his first close look at the compound he intended to storm. He continued to mentally compare it with the aerial photos studied back at Stony Man Farm. His practiced eye took in the positions occupied by the defenders.

  What were the odds? Forty, fifty, a hundred to one? A vitally important factor was in Bolan's favor: the site's defenses were always directed toward the perimeter. But Bolan was already deep inside.

  Knowing what he must do, he inched his way back the width of half the roof.

  He jumped to the ground. The stiletto with its twin razor edges was in his big hand as he long-legged it around the corner of the building.

  He came up behind a pair of troops he had seen from the roof.

  Bolan's left hand closed over the mouth of the near guard while the stiletto slashed across his exposed throat. A nearly severed head lolled back as eyes gone suddenly sightless peered upward.

  The second guard spun to face the night-fighter. Even as he did so, two inches of meticulously honed blade ripped through his larynx, slicing his vocal cords before they could react to the command frantically issued by the brain. The dying nonentity eyed the very special being that was his executioner and in the last split second of his life he was afraid beyond all imagination.

  Like one of the night's many shadows, Bolan moved on to the side door of the motor-pool building. Inside, he edged his way around the vehicles. With a wire garrote held between both hands, he crept toward the guards at the front door.

  It took a dozen measured heartbeats to reach the nearer of the two guards,who stood looking out into the night a few feet behind the other guard's back. The silent shadow extended its big arms to slip the piano wire over the guy's head, then tightened its muscles to make the cut quick and deep. The thin, all but unbreakable wire sliced into the soldier's throat. Any cry of alarm was cut off before it began.

  Bolan eased the sagging body to the ground.

  Again his big arms moved. For the second time in seconds, Bolan struck unawares and cut the odds by one.

  The man on point was stronger, more alert than his dead companion had been. With hands made doubly powerful by the realisation of his danger, he clawed at the savage wire that had already disappeared into the flesh of his fingertips and throat. His weapon fell as the hardguy gasped for life.

  His body tensed in one final contortion. Bolan held it upright by the garrote. Then the big warrior lowered the body to the ground and extracted his killer wire.

  Bolan wiped the wire clean on the sleeve of the once immaculately maintained fatigues at his feet.

  Within seconds Mack Bolan was again at the heart of the deserted motor-pool building. From a slit pocket, Bolan extracted a piece of plastique.

  He worked the waxed-paper covering free and deftly inserted the detonator.

  He stashed the hot pack beside the gas tank of one of the Jeeps parked near the center of the wide building. Also stored in this part of the building were 250-gallon drums, painted black and piled on top of each other to keep them as far as possible from the walls. It was the same principle that was functioning to Bolan's advantage in the camp as a whole. The assumption was that the perimeters were where the attack action would be, and that was where the defense agitation should respond.

  Whenever Bolan activated the electronic device he carried with him, the entire motor pool and the vehicles that the building sheltered would be eliminated in a sheet of liquid fire.

  Bolan moved on.

  The lab building had the same small high windows as the mess area. Lights glowed in several of them. Keeping to the shadows, the black-clad invader pushed on into the darker area to the north of the building.

  12

  WITHOUT GIVING THOUGHT to her impulsive action, Kathy O'Connor faced the pair of guards with clenched fists.

  "Leave us alone, you bastards. We're not going anywhere with you."

  The taller of the pair, a man whose spotless uniform belied the image created by his grossly ugly face and wandering left eye, snarled a reply.

  "All we want is the old bag of bones." "No!" The single word screamed from Kathy's throat.

  The two men crowded into the small room. While the one with the ravaged face reached toward Kathy, his partner stepped to his right in a quick flanking move. The result was predictable.

  Even as Kathy's fists unclenched to become raking claws, the battle was lost. A fist caught her on the side of the head. Lights flashed as pain raced to her brain. A round-house hit from Wall-eye that struck open-handed at the opposite side of her face snapped her head back.

  Without bothering further with the collapsing girl, the men extended angry hands toward the old woman.

  "I can stand by myself." The quiet dignity of the white-haired Elsa Moore stopped the two.

  She stood slowly, stiff from sitting so long. For a second she struggled to obtain her balance.

  Kathy pulled herself back onto the narrow bed. From a laceration just below her hairline, blood flowed in a crimson rivulet.

  "Don't worry, Kathy." The old woman's voice was surprisingly strong as she turned to the girl she had only known for a short while. "Thank you for what you just did. I'll pray for you, my dear. You are a fine girl. As fine as any granddaughter."

  She shuffled on tired legs toward the door, before the impatient guards could command her.

  The door swung shut behind them.

  Alone, Kathy O'Connor let the tears flow. Her thin shoulders shook with sobs as her past fears merged with present grief. Streams of red reached the line of her jaw, and she used the bottom of her T-shirt to dab at them. Finally, she held the bloodied tail of her shirt against the scalp wound; the laceration slowly stopped bleeding and clotting began. Still tear-bright, Kathy's brown eyes gazed across the room at nothing.

  A resolve she did not know she possessed, a kind of resolve absent from her life until now, was beginning to form in her.

  THE CIRCUITRY WITHIN THE MIND of Mack Bolan did its work. A subliminal piece of 35mm black-and-white film came to view on the screen inside his head. Seen only briefly during the course of some long-ago study of hundreds of similar photos, this one now came clear in the big guy's memory.

  LeValle. Maurice LeValle. Suspected of aiding in the financing of a major hit in West Germany. Bolan observed him through the window at the north end of the laboratory. He was in urgent discussion with two others, a man and a woman.

  LeValle. Suspected of providing the funds that went toward the purchase of explosives used against Jews living in Paris. Suspected of planning the kidnapping of half a dozen American executives in Bolivia less than a year ago. Suspected. Always suspected but never proved guilty because the dapper man in the expensive suits was too slippery ever to become exposed to risk.

  The thin guy at LeValle's side was familiar to The Executioner
only as a type. Through the window, Bolan felt the man's cunning and barely contained savagery. Yeah, a type all right. A type Bolan chewed up and spat out with zeal in the consecrated rage of his terrorist wars.

  A door opened at the far end of the room. Two men escorted an elderly woman a few paces into the room and halted. Dwarfed by the two large guards, the old woman seemed terribly frail.

  Bolan saw the female terrorist dismiss the guards with a wave of her hand. She turned to the man Bolan had pegged as LeValle and spoke rapidly. He could not hear the words. The old woman was glancing from one terrorist to the other with obvious interest.

  The eye-catching younger woman poured some liquid into a glass. She picked up the glass and extended it toward the old woman.

  The two females faced each other. Then, with a look of mocking defiance, the old woman accepted the glass thrust toward her. Her bright birdlike eyes never left the cruel eyes of the woman in white, as she swallowed the liquid without hesitation.

  Bolan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

  Within seconds the drug did its work. The thin hand holding the glass contracted as though possessed of a will of its own. The glass shattered in her grasp. Shards of glass bit into paper-thin skin, slashed muscles and tendons.

  Her face contorted. The old woman buckled, crumpled to the floor, the muscles in her crippled legs tightening as the drug did its work. The woman became a bundle of twisting flesh as violent convulsions took possession of her. The experiment had been deliberately compressed.

  Though Bolan had viewed death many times, he had never seen terror so clearly etched in the very muscle tissue of its victim. The hideously foreshortened effect of the drug had destroyed her grotesquely.

  He dropped to a crouch and soft-soled it down the length of the building.

  Ten yards to his right a shadow detached itself from a larger area of dark and moved toward him.

  The Beretta chugged, and a silent slug slammed into the guard.

  Bolan moved on, faster now.

  13

  JOSH WILLIAMS TURNED the tuning knob a fraction and listened intently. The head-phones on his graying head emitted sounds that brought him no satisfaction. With an abrupt gesture he flipped a switch, draining the life from the extensive array of shortwave equipment before him. He pulled the head-phones from his head and placed them on the table beside his station log.

  "I don't know which gives me the greater satisfaction. A thirty-thousand-dollar radio that can't raise Aberdeen, Scotland, or a grandkid who's wearing a hole in the carpet with her pacing."

  Sara turned to face her grandfather. "Sorry." She sipped a cup of coffee. "I've been thinking." She crossed to the kitchen and poured the cool black liquid into the sink. "It's late." She glanced at the watch on her slim wrist.

  "You planning on turning in soon?" he asked.

  "Not really. I thought I'd stay up for a while."

  "Any objection to my keeping you company?" asked the old man.

  "Not if you'll promise to put off that fence repair down by the creek for another day."

  "You talked me into it," he agreed.

  He rose from the straight-backed wooden chair and gave a disgusted look at the extensive radio setup. He moved to a body-worn platform rocker near the stone fireplace. Sara tossed a length of lodgepole pine into the glowing embers.

  "Rate we're going we'll use up our winter's wood before winter gets here," Josh grumbled.

  Sara ignored the remark as she curled her long legs beneath her on the carpet in front of the raised hearth. For minutes she let her eyes range around the room with its knotty pine interior and general evidence of domestic comfort.

  "If you'd like," Josh said without preamble, "we could drive down toward Loveland and Fort Collins one of these days. Talk to a couple of those greyhound breeders I know.

  Maybe persuade them to part with three or four pups that aren't up to setting track records. Save them the trouble of killing the dogs," he added as though the idea had just occurred to him.

  "Thanks, Josh. That might be a good idea. But not too soon. Let's think about it."

  At length he spoke again, giving vent to what was uppermost but unsaid in both their minds.

  "My guess is John Phoenix is using his quiet shooting pistol on them. What do you think?"

  "I think it was a silenced 9mm Beretta."

  "Whatever, my dear, whatever. My bet is that John Phoenix is doing all right for himself."

  Sara turned to face the old man. "I can hike down there alone. You can use the 4WD and cover me from the top of the ridge."

  "And if you needed help I could just throw rocks at them from a distance of maybe half a mile."

  She crossed to the gun cabinet with quick, impatient steps. Her slender fingers stroked the stock of her Winchester.

  She spoke silently to herself. Someone has to help him.

  14

  SNATCHES OF ORDERS carried by the night air came to the ace death-dealer's ears.

  "Infiltration."

  "Perimeter breached."

  "Find them!"

  "Shoot to kill!"

  KATHY RECOGNIZED the approaching steps and voices the instant they entered the building. Holbein's voice was familiar, hated. The other voice she had heard only minutes earlier when Lavinia and the two men had left the building. Kathy O'Connor held her breath as the footsteps neared her room.

  Still motionless, not breathing, she watched in dread as the knob turned and the door swung inward.

  She saw Maurice LeValle's smooth face, his possessive eyes, his slick suit.

  "What happened to Mrs. Moore?" she yelled out. "Where is she?"

  LeValle turned to Kurt.

  "Do you mean the old woman who was with you?" Kurt asked Kathy.

  The girl nodded angrily.

  "She's just fine. She sends you her best wishes." Holbein's face showed some animation as he recalled the old woman's final seconds.

  "She's dead, isn't she? You killed Mrs. Moore the same way you're killing everyone in here!"

  "Enough of that." LeValle stepped forward. His right hand shot out. The sound of flesh striking flesh was like the report of a small-caliber revolver. Kathy recoiled. "We are having trouble in this operation, some nuisance at the moment. We may be attacked," said LeValle, breathing heavily. "I do not have the patience for your hysterics."

  As he spoke, LeValle slipped free of his suit coat. "It is to your advantage to provide me with a pleasurable evening," he said quietly.

  Maurice LeValle gave a sick grin in anticipation of the scene he knew would follow. It was going to be a hell of a night.

  One hell of a night.

  15

  BOLAN BURST THROUGH THE DOOR like an avenging angel of death.

  Lavinia Vitalli's dark eyes took in the terrifying image.

  Bolan kept the muzzle of the Beretta trained on the woman like an all-seeing eye. She was the only one who remained in the room where the experiment had been done. The corpse of the old woman lay near his feet.

  "Do you mind if I finish my wine?" Lavinia said with exalted sarcasm.

  Her chill eyes settled on the glacial cold of Bolan's blue gaze. Not liking the competition, she turned away.

  With his free hand Bolan located the variable-frequency remote-control unit. He came up to her so she could see the device.

  Bolan thumbed it.

  He was rewarded with a muted explosion, a flash in the window, a whump as the gas tank's in the motor pool ignited.

  The muscles and cords in Lavinia's neck became rigid. The sounds were familiar to her as the stock in trade of terrorists the world over.

  "You're too late." She spat the words across the space between them. "Kurt has already left. You cannot stop him now. And you are going to die, just like the others."

  She hurled the wineglass at Bolan's face. His reflexes took over long before it reached him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the glass sail past and smash into the wall.

  Lavinia
spun toward a weapon on a nearby table.

  Bolan's Beretta whispered its statement.

  A hole appeared in the white smock by her right breast.

  The punch of the 9mm chunk of power had snapped her body back against the wall. Lavinia Vitalli now stared down in horrified fascination as the front of her smock was stained spreading scarlet.

  She could not believe that her own body could be violated. The horror of it overwhelmed all pain.

  Bolan, without anger, without triumph, stroked the autopistol's trigger again.

  The second shot brought twin deaths. As Lavinia Vitalli died, with her died her dreams for conquest and domination.

  The evil woman's body slipped to the floor as Bolan turned toward the door.

  BOLAN CRASHED INTO THE CORRIDOR. With the 93-R at the ready, he glared down the long hallway.

  Kurt Holbein skidded to a halt. For milli-seconds stretching to eternity, the two men faced each other.

  Bolan could all but see the workings of Holbein's mind.

  Each hand held a glass-stoppered container. Holbein was about to make a life-or-death decision.

  Bolan speeded up the process by making the choice for him.

  A soft phut from the auto-pistol on single-shot shattered one of the two bottles. Shards of glass flew as the force of the 9mm slug exploded the container. Slivers of glass embedded themselves in Holbein's flesh.

  The guy began to shake.

  Each tiny shard of glass that had pierced Holbein's flesh had become a hypodermic needle injecting the killer liquid into the man's body.

  Holbein's face became a contorted mask as muscles drew the surface flesh into grotesque agony.

  The second container and its once-precious contents fell to the tile floor. In a spreading pool of liquid, the usefulness of the concoction evaporated, by the side of the man who had once been a greedy lover of power unlimited.

  A twisted mouth struggled open to draw oxygen into lungs unable to expand.