Kitabı oxu: «The Killing Rule»

The Killing Rule

Mack Bolan_®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Chuck Rogers for his contribution to this work.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, cat footed through the London fog. He’d already picked up a tail, which was all right with him. Bolan was spoiling for a fight this evening, anyway. In fact, it was the number-one item on his agenda. He turned up the collar of his peacoat and pulled his watch cap low over his forehead against the chill, and moved toward his target.

London was one of the most cosmopolitan cities on Earth. Nearly every immigrant group on the planet, including their organized crime and terrorist syndicates, had an enclave in the city. Since ancient times, the Irish had been one of the first and foremost.

The Irish Republican Army was on Bolan’s plate this night.

Pub Claddagh was his destination.

It was a well-known IRA meet-and-greet watering hole. Not surprisingly, Pub Claddagh was well used to visits by the English bobbies, inspectors from Scotland Yard and undercover agents from MI-5. It had also received visits from two CIA field agents in the past three months, both of whom had wound up floating dead in the Thames River with severe contusions, multiple broken bones and a .223-caliber bullet through the backs of their heads. Ballistics had shown that the bullets had come from AR-18 assault rifles, one of the IRA’s weapons of choice—one they were so pleased with they had come to nickname the AR-18 “Widowmaker.” Both CIA men had left widows behind.

Now Pub Claddagh was about to have its first visit from the Executioner.

But first Bolan was going to have to get to the door. The two men tailing him were making no more attempts at stealth. Their boots thudded on the cobblestones as they briskly caught up with him. An Irish brogue broke through the thick fog blanketing the street. “Hey! Yank!”

Bolan turned to his opponents. They were large men and heavily built. One wore his hair cropped short, the other had shaved his head. Their lumpish faces, poorly set broken noses, scarred brows and cauliflower ears only added to the “goon” effect. They looked like archetypal British soccer hooligans, only they spoke with Irish accents that could be cut with a knife. The skinhead leaned forward, jutting a jaw you could break a croquet mallet on.

“And where d’you think you’re going?”

Bolan spit casually on the pavement between them. “What’s it to you, Paddy?”

“Paddy!” The skinhead grinned happily. “D’you hear that, Liam?”

“Oh, I do, Shane.” Liam smiled like a shark. “A bold boy, this one.”

Both men were dressed in Team Ireland football jerseys voluminous enough to hide some significant weapons. Bolan suspected this was to be a beating, albeit a brutal one, rather than an assassination or a kidnapping.

“If you two are looking to beg a fiver, bugger off. If you’re looking to get buggered, you’ve got each other.”

Shane laughed delightedly. The American was being very obliging.

Liam’s eyes narrowed slightly. He was a predator, but he sensed something was wrong. The American wasn’t belligerent or filled with drunken defiance. He was showing no fear whatsoever, and his burning blue eyes were disturbing even in the dim light. Liam folded his arms across his thick chest and tsked sadly, still confident in his and his partner’s control of the situation. That was his first and last mistake.

Bolan took the opportunity to kick Shane in the shin.

During the early years of the Cold War, the OSS and other intelligence agencies had issued shoes with steel toecaps for crippling opponents in sudden struggles. Such modifications couldn’t make it through today’s airport X-ray or metal detector screenings, but Bolan had the modern equivalent made out of polycarbonate Lexan that had the tensile strength of industrial-grade cast zinc. They weren’t quite as strong as steel, but then again neither was Shane’s tibia. The bone cracked with an audible click noise.

Shane let out an amazingly high-pitched scream for a man of his size.

Liam had made the unforgivable mistake of crossing his arms and posturing when he should have been attacking. He unfolded his arms with alacrity, but he was already behind the curve.

Bolan’s hand blurred into motion, and he slapped Liam. But rather than slapping the man across the face, the soldier slapped into it. He cupped his palm as he hit Liam to create an air pocket, and the blow sounded like a gunshot. The cupped air concentrated the blow and drove the force into Liam’s Gasserian ganglion, where the trigeminal nerves carrying information from the eyes, ears and face met. Tears geysered out of Liam’s eyes and blood burst from his nose from the force of the blow. The trauma beneath the surface was far more severe. The Gasserian ganglion had a direct route to the brain, and by crushing the nerve bundle Bolan’s blow had reproduced the symptoms of facial neuralgia, which many medical resources described as the most terrible pain a human being was capable of experiencing.

Liam dropped to his knees, clawing at his face, his screams slurred by his malfunctioning jaw. Within heartbeats he collapsed and went fetal in blissful unconsciousness. Shane was still hopping around on one foot, screaming and clutching his fractured left shin, so Bolan stepped in and fractured his right.

Shane toppled, howling, to the cobbles.

Bolan took their wallets and removed their ID cards before moving on up the street. Above a green-painted oaken door thick enough for a medieval castle hung a classic tin pub sign. On it was painted a golden claddagh symbol, a heart topped by a crown and held by two hands. The heart symbolized love, the hands friendship and the crown loyalty. Bolan pushed open the heavy door and the smells of cigarette smoke and shepherd’s pie washed over him. Warmth radiated from a glowing fireplace. The interior was classic pub. The wood was ancient dark varnished oak, crushed red-velvet upholstery covered the walls and the furniture and gleaming brass was everywhere. There were about thirty patrons in the pub; most sat at tables or in booths. A few sat at the bar watching the football scores on the television.

Bolan pulled off his watch cap and walked up to the bar. The bartender was an immense man in formal bartender attire. His red hair was cut close to his skull and was the same shade as his short beard and mustache. He looked like a jolly Irish Santa. He had a lazy eye, and one eye looked at Bolan while the other one appeared to be taking note of the scorers on the television above the bar. He smiled at Bolan benignly. “What’ll it be, mate?”

Bolan ran his gaze across the taps. “Half and half.”

The bartender nodded wisely and filled a pint glass half full of Harp lager. He filled the rest of the glass with Guinness stout poured down the side of the glass over a spoon to create two distinct layers of light and dark beer. He topped it with a flourish that left a four-leaf clover shape in the foamy head. Bolan sipped his beer and acknowledged its perfect execution with a grin. He reached into his coat and produced pictures of the two dead CIA agents. “You seen either of these two in the past couple of months?”

The bartender squinted at the photos and shrugged. “Can’t say’s I have, but then I can’t say’s I haven’t.” He gave Bolan a merry smile. “Y’see we are London’s most famous Irish pub. We get a lot of American tourists and businessmen coming in.”

Bolan hadn’t said the two dead agents were Americans, but he was willing to chalk that up to an assumption on the bartender’s part. Bolan took out Liam’s and Shane’s ID cards and placed them on the bar. “You know these two?”

The bartender had an excellent poker face, but his face froze for the barest instant and he knew it. He lost his veneer of friendliness. “And where’d you get those, then?”

“From Liam and Shane,” Bolan said.

“Are they under arrest?”

“No.” Bolan smiled. “But I left their crippled asses lying in the street a couple of minutes ago.”

The bartender’s thick fingers clenched into fists. He took a long breath and unclenched them. “You know, I think you’d best be leaving.”

Bolan feigned surprise. “But I haven’t finished my beer yet.”

The bartender’s lazy eye suddenly swung into line and the big man glared at Bolan in binocular anger. He slowly leaned forward, worked his jaws a moment and spit into Bolan’s half and half. “Take your time, then.”

Bolan scooped up his pictures and pushed away from the bar. He went from table to table, showing the pictures and asking the same questions while he felt the bartender’s eyes burning holes in his back. A glance back showed him the bartender talking rapidly into a cell phone. Bolan went on with his interviews. Most of the Claddagh’s patrons genuinely didn’t recognize the pictures. A few clearly recognized Liam and Shane. When Bolan responded that no, he was not with the police, he was informed of several unique places he could “bugger off” to.

The big American concluded his interviews, leaving a card with a phone number and the address of the hotel he was staying at with whomever would accept one. Bolan pulled on his cap and stepped out into the London night.

Liam and Shane were gone. Rooted in the same spot where the fight had occurred stood two men of equally goonlike dimensions. They wore long coats with hooded black sweatshirts underneath. The hoods were pulled low over the men’s brows to throw their faces into shadow. A similar pair of men stood directly across the street from Bolan. One of them held a cell phone to his ear. Standing there like stones with the fog creeping around them, they looked like the IRA’s own Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Bolan’s hand went to the grips of the Beretta 93-R machine pistol beneath his coat.

The IRA was different from a lot of terrorist organizations. They had what some might describe as a vaguely achievable goal of driving the British out of Northern Ireland and uniting their country. Driving the Protestants into the sea was part of it, but driving out the British had to come first. IRA members also tended not to be suicidal. Martyrdom usually wasn’t on the agenda, and they wanted to get away with their bombings and killings. However, like any such organization, they had their hardcore “soldiers.” Men who were ready to die beneath the bullets of British soldiers or do a life sentence in an English supermax prison standing on their heads and not talking.

Bolan faced four of them now.

One of the men across the street took a single step forward. He twisted his wrist and a length of wood slid down out of his sleeve. The weapon was a shillelagh, the ancient Irish war club. Only this wasn’t one of the walking sticks sold to tourists in the airports. The tapering blackthorn terminated in a root-ball the size of a human fist.

The weapon was not a total anachronism.

During a riot when British soldiers were wielding batons, firing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets and the rioters responded with bricks and stones, an IRA man could produce his shillelagh and crush the skull of a traitor or political target. One more fatal head trauma would go unnoticed in the melee.

Bolan didn’t currently want to shoot any of these men. He wanted the men controlling them. The Executioner took out his cell phone and punched a preset number. A cheerful Englishwoman asked him if he required a cab and he provided the address of the pub and then waited. He stared at the Irish, and they stared at him.

A London black cab turned the corner and proceeded up the street. The clubman threw his weapon, and it clattered across the cobblestones to rest at Bolan’s feet. The four men melted away into the fog. Bolan scooped up the shillelagh, surprised at its weight and heft. He tucked it under his coat and climbed into his cab. The club was a challenge. The IRA had dropped a punk card for Bolan and dared him to pick it up.

The Executioner had picked it up, and he’d left ample calling cards in the bar.

CHAPTER TWO

Bolan lay on the bed of his hotel room and examined his new club. The three-foot length of blackthorn was three inches in diameter and varnished against the elements. The Irish craftsman had added a brass cap on the tapered end to prevent splitting. The most interesting aspect of it was the business end. The ugly lump of the root-ball had been partially drilled out, and molten lead had been poured in to “load” the stick. It was a club that would not just crack a human skull but go through it.

He sat up as the satellite link peeped at him from its aluminum case. Bolan flipped open the attached laptop and clicked a key. Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman’s craggy, bearded face appeared on the eleven-inch monitor in real time all the way from Stony Man Farm in Virginia. Bolan held up his shillelagh for the camera. “Look what I got.”

Kurtzman’s brow furrowed. “Nice battle bludgeon you got there. Who gave it to you?”

“A nice Irish lad.” Bolan tossed the cudgel onto the bed. “Speaking of likely lads, what did you get on the two IDs I faxed you?”

United Kingdom criminal justice forms began to scroll on the screen beneath Kurtzman’s image. Liam and Shane had rap sheets. “We have Shane O’Maonlai and Liam MacGowan, both born in Ulster, Northern Ireland. Shane did two years for assault at Magilligan prison where apparently he was recruited by Liam. Both men have had multiple cases of assault lodged against them, though in almost all cases the charges have been dropped.”

Bolan nodded. “They’re low-level muscle.”

“Yeah,” the computer expert agreed. “Their MO seems to be cracking heads and keeping people in line for the IRA in London, but by their rap sheets they’ve also dabbled in leg-breaking and loan-sharking for the London Mob to earn pocket money.” His eyes flicked to the bed. “The shillelagh strikes me as a bit odd. Liam and Shane do their work with their hands.”

“I didn’t get it from them. Like you said, they’re leg-breakers. When I left them on the ground and started poking my nose around the pub, the bartender called in some heavy hitters.”

Kurtzman frowned. “You took it off one of them?”

“No, they gave it to me.”

“As a gift?”

“No, it’s a challenge.”

Kurtzman sighed. It was one of Bolan’s usual tactics. When all else failed, he stuck his head out and waited to see who took a swing at it. “I don’t suppose you got any fingerprints off it?”

“They were wearing gloves, and it’s as clean as whistle.”

The computer wizard regarded Bolan dryly. “I gather you left a road map to your exact location.”

“Pretty much,” Bolan admitted. “You get anything on the bartender at the Claddagh?”

“Ronald Caron, former Irish wrestling champion, former military policeman in the Irish Defence Forces, suspected of gun trafficking, suspected of harboring fugitives, suspected of assault, twice arrested on conspiracy charges but released for lack of evidence and a ‘person of interest’ in nearly every alleged IRA action in London for the past two decades.”

Bolan nodded. The bartender might be a hundred pounds over his fighting weight, but underneath the jolly exterior he had given off the vibe of a very dangerous man.

Kurtzman pulled up MacGowan’s file again. “It’s of note that Liam MacGowan and Caron both served at the same time in the Irish Defence Forces. Though MacGowan was light infantry rather than an MP.”

That didn’t come as a surprise, either. The Irish Defence Forces were small by nature, generally equipped with obsolescent equipment due to budget constraints, and chronically short of manpower. English recruiting officers for the U.K.’s armed forces were only a ferry ride across the Irish Sea and offered better pay, better benefits, better terms of service and were always happy to enlist Irishmen. The only reason to join the Irish Army was that you were Irish and wanted to.

The Irish government denied it, but there had always been cells of the IRA within the Irish Defence Forces, who used the Irish military as an IRA recruiting and training ground, as well as using the military structure for networking. He had no doubt that Caron had probably recruited MacGowan. When it came to petty intrigues, strong-arming and IRA errand-running on the streets of London, Caron was MacGowan’s and O’Maonlai’s control officer.

Still, killing CIA agents seemed somewhat above their pay grade. There was something bigger happening, and bigger fish were involved. Bolan was sure of it.

His phone rang. “Just a sec, Bear.” Bolan picked up the phone. “Yeah?”

A basso profundo, distorted voice that had obviously been put through a voice scrambler spoke over the line. “You’re dead here.”

Bolan pushed a button on his electronic warfare suite. The trace started, but he doubted his caller would stay on the line. Bolan had his suspicions about the caller. “That you, fatso?”

“Get out of England or you’ll wind up like the other two.”

The line clicked dead.

“Well, that was pretty cut and dried,” Kurtzman commented. “So you think they have the hotel surrounded?”

“I’m sure they’ve got an eye on it.” Bolan checked his watch. It was 2:15 a.m. He doubted they would have an assassination attempt or a snatch set up this quickly. The call was more designed to egg him on rather than to warn him off.

Bolan decided to be egged. “Well, I’m going out for a ride.” He scooped up the shillelagh and took a few choice items out of a suitcase.

“You’re not going back to the pub.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll check back in a little later.” Bolan clicked off the satellite link, tested the security measures in the room, then took the elevator down to the garage. His Renault rental vehicle was nondescript, but had enough power to suit his needs. Bolan key-carded the gate and tore out into the night. There was little traffic in the late hour other than cabs, so he quickly arrived at Pub Claddagh. The light over the sign was off and the windows shuttered closed. The ancient, thick oak door would probably withstand minutes of abuse from a police handheld door ram.

Bolan exited his vehicle and pulled a short length of flexible charge out of his coat pocket. He peeled off the adhesive backing, inserted a detonator pin and pressed the charge against the door lock. He stepped back and pushed a preset cell phone number. Yellow fire cracked like a halo around the lock, and Bolan put his foot against the door and shoved.

The lights were on. The fire in the fireplace still crackled. Caron blinked in surprise from behind the bar. MacGowan and O’Maonlai looked up from their beers in horror. Two men sat with the thugs. Bolan didn’t know them, but he recognized their long, dark coats and the hoods they’d pushed back onto their shoulders.

The Executioner closed the distance in three strides. Both of O’Maonlai’s lower legs were in casts, and a pair of crutches leaned against the table. The left side of MacGowan’s face was swollen as if a rugby ball had grown under the skin. The bruising had turned an ugly black and his left eye was swollen shut. He was drinking his pint of stout through a straw. He winced and sputtered beer as Bolan advanced. He couldn’t work his jaw to speak.

O’Maonlai shouted and pointed hysterically. “It’s him! He’s the man who—”

Bolan rammed his heel into the man’s chest and toppled him and his chair backward. MacGowan started to rise and Bolan lunged, thrusting his forefinger like a fencer into his opponent’s distorted left cheek. Liam let out a high, thin scream and fell backward over his chair.

Bolan grasped his new shillelagh. The two men Bolan didn’t know had recovered from their initial surprise. The closer man slapped a hand down on the table to push himself up and his other reached under his jacket. Bolan swung the club like a hammer and brought it down on the man’s hand. The man jerked and cringed with shock. The Executioner then swung the shillelagh in a tennis forehand and swatted the hand clawing beneath the coat. The man slid out of his chair, screaming and tucking his crushed hands against his sides.

The other man was up, his coat thrown back, and his silenced PB pistol had just cleared leather, but the combination of the long sound suppressor and a shoulder holster made for a slow draw. Bolan lunged again, ramming the brutal head of the shillelagh into his opponent’s solar plexus. The blood drained from the man’s face as his sternum cracked beneath the lead-loaded club. Bolan brought the weapon down across the gunman’s wrist. The ulna cracked and the pistol fell to the floor.

The assassin joined it a second later.

Ronald Caron leisurely came around the bar with his own shillelagh. He tapped the huge knob into a hand the size of a bunch of bananas and smiled at the weapon Bolan held. “Oh, boyo, you should have brought a gun.”

Bolan smiled back. “I did.”

Caron continued to advance, apparently without a care in the world. “You should’ve used it, then. When you had the chance.”

Bolan took a step back and put the table between them. He didn’t want to shoot Caron, but Cro-Magnon club fighting was the Irishman’s game, not his. Caron stepped over MacGowan’s mewling form and continued to advance. He tsked at the weapon in Bolan’s hand. “You know, I never much cared for the leaded ones. It ruins the balance.” He dropped his club to his side and began making small, lazy figure eights. “Of course some say it adds power. But as for me?”

Caron moved with speed belying a man of his age and bulk. He swung the shillelagh up and around, not like a man with a club but a man cracking a whip. The club crashed down and smashed the pub table between them in two. Caron recovered instantly and tapped the knob into his palm again, smiling at the carnage he’d wrought. “I say it’s the man behind the shillelagh that matters.” He stepped forward, wood crunching beneath his feet and his smile going ugly. “What d’you have behind yours, boyo?”

Crossing clubs with the big man was suicide.

Bolan flung his shillelagh. He threw it down like a game of mumblety-peg being played with sledgehammers. Caron should have had polycarbonate Lexan inserts in his shoes. The giant Irishman grimaced and tottered with his first two toes broken. “Oh, you’ll—”

Bolan was already airborne. He sailed across the broken table and delivered a flying side kick into Caron’s chest. It was like kicking a beer keg. Caron grunted and budged half a step back. Bolan pistoned his right fist into exactly the same spot over Caron’s heart, and for the first time the man’s face registered genuine pain. His left hand shot out and covered Bolan’s face like a catcher’s mitt, his fingers vising down in an iron claw. It wasn’t quite the facial neuralgia he’d induced in MacGowan, but it felt like cold chisels were attempting to crash through his facial bones.

Bolan thrust his thumbs into Caron’s carotids, but the bull-like neck resisted the blow.

The giant Irishman yanked the soldier into his embrace by the face and rammed it with his hip. A second later he’d spun Bolan and stood behind him, the huge shillelagh pressed against one side of his throat, a brawny arm squeezed against the other. The huge hand had slid from Bolan’s face to the back of his head and shoved his face forward into the strangle. It was the figure-four choke out, aided and abetted by three feet of Irish firewood.

Caron whispered in Bolan’s ear like a lover. “Yer going to go to sleep now, boyo, and when you wake? It’ll be me standing over you. Not with my pride and joy, now—” Caron cinched the strangle deeper with a practiced shrug of his shoulders “—but with a knife from the kitchen. We’ll have a long talk you and I, before I send you to the Old Place, at the bottom of the Thames.”

Bolan couldn’t break the hold. His trachea compressed and sparkly things danced in his vision. He regretted not having drawn his pistol. The Beretta was in a small-of-the-back holster and wedged against Caron’s massive middle. He was swiftly running out of air and options. Caron knew what Bolan was thinking from long practice, and he buried his face into Bolan’s back to prevent any eye gouging.

The Executioner lifted his knee to his chest and stomped down with all of his might on the Irishman’s two broken digits, breaking a third in the bargain. Caron groaned, and Bolan raised his foot and stomped his heel down again. The Irishman couldn’t help himself. He instinctively lifted his mangled foot from the floor to protect it. Tottering on one leg, he lost all his leverage. Bolan grabbed the club pressed against his neck, dropped to one knee and heaved.

The three-hundred-pounder flew over Bolan’s shoulder in a textbook judo “flying-mare” throw.

O’Maonlai screamed as the giant beached like a whale across his broken legs. Bolan gasped air into his lungs. Caron was already struggling to rise. The soldier strode forward and kicked the Irishman in the side of the neck. The blow had far more power than a karate chop, and the bartender went limp. The shooter with the broken sternum lay gasping weakly and staring up into the lights. His gun hand lay like a broken bird protectively between his legs. MacGowan was reaching through the rubble for Bolan’s fallen shillelagh. His open eye widened in terror as Bolan loomed over him. The soldier gave him another finger poke in the swollen hinge of his jaw. The thug passed out without even screaming.

The remaining shooter had risen to his knees and elbows and was making an admirable attempt to wrap his broken hands around his silenced pistol. He looked up just in time to receive Bolan’s foot in his teeth. He fell onto his back and took the soldier’s second kick between the legs. He curled fetal, spitting teeth and vomiting up stout.

Bolan relieved both shooters of their pistols. He shot out the overhead lights, blew out the mirror behind the bar and with a twinge of conscience expended the remaining bullets on the vintage ports and the decades-aged single malts on the top shelf. It was a shame to shoot up a historic pub like this, but it had become a nest of serpents, and it was a calculated affront. He wanted the IRA enraged. He wanted the hotheads among them to search him out for payback.

Bolan tossed the spent pistols onto pile of humanity on the floor. He tucked his shillelagh back up his sleeve and scooped up Caron’s, as well.

Now he had two.

CHAPTER THREE

“Well, Bear—” Bolan held up wood in each hand for the satellite camera “—now I have two.”

Kurtzman grinned. “That’s very nice, Striker, but did you really have to go back and beat up everyone a second time?”

Bolan considered. “No, but I felt like it.”

Kurtzman’s faced showed what he thought of that, and Bolan knew he was right. It had been close. Two CIA field agents were dead, and so far all Bolan had to show for it were two pub brawls and a couple of bludgeons. He just had to hope he’d stirred things up enough that someone higher up the food chain would reveal himself. “Have Shane, Caron or any of the boys showed up in any hospitals?”

Kurtzman shook his head.

It was a long shot. The IRA would have some doctors in London to take care of these kinds of things on the quiet. Bolan considered all they had, which wasn’t much. The Pentagon had gotten hold of some pretty wild chatter about the IRA getting its hands on weapons of mass destruction. Britain’s MI-5 had put the vague rumors on their very low order of probability list and continued with much more promising lines of investigation of terrorism in the U.K. However, the CIA had a sleeper asset in place with the IRA. That asset had gone active, quietly investigating the rumor, and he had swiftly wound up dead. So had his replacement. Despite their losses, MI-5 seemed to consider the matter a nonissue. At least they did not appear to be assigning any of their own assets to it.

Of course MI-5 probably wasn’t pleased that the U.S. had gone ahead and staged an operation on U.K. soil without telling them. Intelligence agencies, even those of staunch allies, were extremely territorial. There would be directors in MI-5 who on some level were secretly pleased and felt the “Yanks” had gotten a deserved comeuppance for playing cowboy games on British soil. Still, two dead CIA agents should have merited some attention. Hard-won instincts told Bolan that there was something wrong with the situation. He couldn’t say why, but to him it felt like the whole matter was being swept under the rug.

“Bear, who would have the power to hush this up?”

“A whole lot of people, but you also have to factor that the CIA blundered and got a bloody nose. It’s causing quite a little stink between our intelligence communities. There’s every reason to suspect that MI-5 is running its own operation on the matter right now and feels no compunction at all to inform the U.S. about it much less involve us.” Kurtzman pointed a condemning finger. “For that matter, once the Brits find out that you’re running your own gambit over there, which they will, considering how you’re leaving a trail of broken Irishmen everywhere you go, things are going to get downright frosty across the pond.”

Bolan knew that all too well. “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to pay MI-5 a visit.”

Kurtzman just stared. “Really.”

“Like you said, they’re going to find out about me sooner or later. I might as well give them a courtesy call.”

“They’re going to read you the riot act and have you shipped home, and that’s best-case scenario.”

“Probably, but there’s something going on here. Something more than the CIA failing to penetrate the IRA. So if I take out some low-level thugs and then go to MI-5, I think my cache as a target will increase. I have to rattle some more cages.”

“You know, Striker, I’d be real careful rattling MI-5’s cage. They’re some of the best in the world, and they don’t mess around.”

Bolan knew that, too. In fact he was banking on it.

MI-5 London Headquarters

BOLAN SAT ON A FOLDING CHAIR in a “white” or interview room. It was actually a neutral beige. There were no furnishings other than a table and two chairs. Several cameras were positioned in the ceiling and a CD recording device sat on the table. The gray-haired woman sitting across from Bolan looked like a stereotypical British grandmother right down to her horn-rimmed glasses, frumpy tweed jacket and gray wool skirt. Bolan had not been offered any coffee, tea or sherry. He sat, maintaining a professional and calm demeanor while Assistant Director Heloise Finch quietly and, with a British upper-class politeness so stiff it was insulting, lit into him.

Phrases like “poor spirit of cooperation,” “endangering a relationship that had thrived since World War II” and Bolan’s own “temerity” were tripping off her tongue forward, backward and sideways. It appeared that the director was finally winding down.

“…and while I do appreciate the courtesy of your taking the time to call upon us, I’m really not sure in what capacity I or my department can be of any assistance to you.”

Finch didn’t appreciate the visit at all. She was clearly appalled by the whole situation. Bolan smiled winningly. “Would it be shabby of me if I asked for your help anyway?”

Finch steepled her hands and stared at Bolan for long moments. “You know, I believe it would.”

“I can see how you’d feel that way.”

“The CIA has—”

Bolan cut in before she could work up a fresh head of steam. “Director Finch, I don’t work for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“You know—” Finch flipped open a thin manila folder “—I have something of a file on you, or at least someone matching your description. Much of the intel is above my pay grade and security clearance. Barely a pamphlet, actually, but it appears you have operated within the United Kingdom before, sometimes in what can loosely be described as cooperation with British Intelligence and apparently sometimes without the permission of Her Majesty’s government.”

Bolan saw no reason to lie. “That’s essentially correct.”

Finch was somewhat taken aback by Bolan’s directness. “I have received a report of a disturbance over at Pub Claddagh last night.”

Bolan shrugged.

“May I state that Her Majesty’s government does not appreciate American citizens coming to her shores and engaging in donnybrooks and shillelagh battles in her pubs.”

MI-5 clearly had informants in the London IRA infrastructure. Bolan maintained his poker face.

“However, MI-5 has received rather veiled suggestions from some very strange quarters that it would not be ‘unappreciated’ were my department to show you whatever professional courtesy seems appropriate.” Finch leaned forward and peered over the rims of her glasses. “I have taken this to mean I should not have you immediately detained and deported.”

“That would be preferable.”

“However, to reiterate, I am not sure what if any assistance I am willing to provide you.”

Bolan smiled.

Assistant Director Finch’s cool reserve broke as she smiled resignedly. “Of course, I have already been of assistance to you. You are sticking your nose into the IRA doings, and your taking a meeting at MI-5 HQ ups your market value.”

Bolan didn’t bother to deny it.

“I will be blunt with you. My superiors and members of the government concerned with this organization consider this rumor of the IRA acquiring weapons of mass destruction rather something of a wild-goose chase, and your government’s dogged pursuit of it puzzling if not downright ridiculous, as well as a strain on the relationship between our two countries.”

“Director Finch, the fact remains that two CIA intelligence agents have been killed.”

“The CIA agents in question were trying to infiltrate the Irish Republican Army’s London infrastructure, and that, and I say this in all modesty, if it is attempted without the help of my department is an excellent way to commit suicide. Their loss is indeed regrettable, however, it is not totally surprising.”

“I appreciate your candor. Let me blunt, as well.” Bolan’s smile fell away from his face. “There is something very wrong going on here, and you know it.”

Finch sighed. “Other than your two dead CIA agents, what proof do you have that the IRA is up to anything worse than usual?”

“Nothing. Just a hunch. Just like you.”

Finch stared at Bolan for long moments. He knew he’d read the woman correctly. Finch knew something was wrong, as well. MI-5 was one of the top internal intelligence agencies on the planet, second only perhaps to the FBI. Like all internal intelligence agencies they had civilian oversight. The FBI was responsible to congress. MI-5 was responsible to the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Throughout their illustrious history, MI-5 was known far and wide for spending almost as much time battling English bureaucracy as they did enemies of the United Kingdom.

“You are playing a very dangerous game, and I cannot even begin to describe my feelings toward yet another U.S. citizen engaging in rogue intelligence operations under my nose.”

“However,” Bolan countered, “you know there is something bigger going on here, and for whatever reason your department has been told to low priority the situation or ignore it completely.”

Finch’s face set in stone. “For the record, you are not to engage in any intelligence operations against the IRA on English soil. For that matter, you are not to ‘operate’ on English soil in any capacity at all unless directly requested to by Her Majesty’s government. If you are caught doing so, it would be my duty to have you at the very least detained and deported if not brought up on criminal charges.”

Bolan nodded. “I understand.” He glanced at the recorder on the table and Finch clicked it off. “For the record, any and all intelligence I might gather if I engaged in such a questionable activity would be immediately shared with Her Majesty’s government, and done so through your offices exclusively.”

“I believe we understand each other.” Finch placed her business card on the table and pressed the intercom button. “Security, please have our guest escorted off the premises.”

BOLAN GLANCED at his watch as he drove through traffic. His modified wristwatch was blinking at him, which meant that someone had gone into his hotel room without deactivating the security suite. Bolan drove an extra block past his hotel and then circled around to approach from the back, heading into the hotel loading dock. A man in a purple hotel jacket looked at his vehicle askance. Bolan exited the vehicle and handed him a fifty-pound note, and the man went back to overseeing the off-loading of towels from a linen truck. Bolan followed the pallets of towels into the laundry.

His watch peeped at him again. Someone had opened his laptop.

Bolan approached two men in white uniforms speaking what Bolan was pretty sure was a Nigerian dialect and smoking cigarettes. “Say, can I ask you a favor? Could you go up to the fifth floor and see if anyone strange is lurking around outside room 502?”

One of the men grinned. “Sorry. We’re on break.”

Bolan peeled off another fifty-pound note. “There’s no way I can convince you?”

The second Nigerian snatched the note. “I am convinced.” He pinched out his cigarette and carefully placed it back in the pack. “I’ll be back.”

His partner scowled after him as he disappeared into the service elevator.

Bolan smiled sympathetically. “I might have a job for you in a minute.”

The man peered at Bolan narrowly. “This is nothing illegal, then?”

Bolan was almost positive the two men were illegal immigrants. They were probably in desperate need of money but even more desperate to have no attention drawn to themselves. Bolan shrugged. The man clapped a hand to his forehead as if he had a migraine. “Oh, man…”

Ten minutes later Bolan’s scout returned. He shook his head. “This real James Bond shit, you know.”

Bolan nodded. “How many?”

“Two. One big. One little. Nasty-looking white men. Lounging about. I don’t know, but beneath their jackets I think they have guns.” He peered at Bolan in identical suspicion as his partner. “That your room?”

Bolan held up his key. “Can I ask you gentlemen a favor?”

They blinked in unison. “Oh?”

“I need a diversion.”

They stared at Bolan noncommittally.

The big American turned to his scout. “What’s your name?”

“Musa Balam.”

“Musa, nice to meet you.” He turned to the other man. “And you?”

He stared at Bolan defiantly. “Sheriff Modu.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Matt. What I want you to do is this. I want you both to go back up the elevator. When it opens, Musa, you run down the hall to the stairs, and you? You chase him, yelling in Hausa.”

Modu looked at Bolan as if he were insane. “Not for fifty pounds.”

“How about a hundred?” Bolan grinned. “Each, and another hundred once it’s done.”

Balam peered curiously. “And after it is done, what?”

“You’re better off not knowing. You just run for the stairs and keep going.”

A furious exchange in Hausa ensued. Balam apparently won. “Show us the money.”

Bolan peeled several bills from his money clip. Even the reticent Sheriff Modu’s eyes lit up. Bolan handed them a hundred each and followed them into the elevator. Modu took a wet towel from a bin and coiled it into a rat’s tail. The door pinged open on the fifth floor. Balam ran out screaming and Modu raced after him, shouting in scathing Hausa and snapping the towel like a whip. Bolan waited four seconds until he knew they had passed his door and then filled his hand with his Beretta 93-R and stepped out of the elevator.

As Balam had said, two men stood near his door. Both men had short, brush-cut blond hair and wore leather jackets. By the bulges under their left arms, his scout was right. They were packing substantial heat. The smaller man held a cell phone, obviously waiting for warning from the men watching the garage and the lobby. The two Nigerians were almost to the stairs at the end of the hall. The big man shook his head in disgust at their antics. “Agh, can you believe those bloody foreigners.”

The accent told Bolan that the man was a South African. Bolan strode up to him, the big man catching the movement a second too late. Bolan cracked the slide of his Beretta machine pistol across the side of the man’s face, laying the cheek open to the bone. He whipped the 93-R backhand across the bridge of the little man’s nose and shattered it. The big man had bent over with pain and clutched his face. The butt of the Beretta crunched into the back of his skull and dropped him unconscious to the ground. Bolan rammed the muzzle of the Beretta into the side of the little man’s neck and he fell to the carpet.

Bolan knelt over the big man and took his ID. Beneath his jacket he was wearing Threat Level II soft body armor. In a shoulder rig he was carrying a BXP submachine gun with the stock folded and a sound suppressor fitted over the barrel. The weapon was basically an American MAC-10 cleaned up and improved to South African specifications. Bolan took the weapon and checked the load. It was loaded with hollow point rounds. He took the little man’s BXP, as well, and checked his watch. Someone was still messing with his laptop. That laptop had been designed by Akira Tokaido, one of Stony Man Farm’s cybernetic experts. The Farm’s resident armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had installed a number of security devices that had nothing to do with binary code. Bolan pumped the bezel of his watch three times and was rewarded with a scream as the right-hand speaker in the laptop’s monitor frame spewed a compressed stream of pepper spray into the operator’s eyes.

Bolan kicked open the door of his hotel room.

A redheaded woman was on the floor in front of Bolan’s laptop clutching her face. The man who had been in guard position looked up from where he bent over her. His BXP was in his hand but on the wrong side of his body. Bolan put the red-dot sight of his right-hand weapon on the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The BXP stuttered and twenty-two rounds of 9 mm hollowpoint ammo jackhammered into the gunner’s chest as Bolan held the trigger down on full-auto. The man’s armor held, but he still had to absorb the bullets’ energy and his body took a beating like he was being kicked to death by a mule. The BXP clacked open on empty, and Bolan helped the man onto his back and into unconsciousness by flinging the five and half pounds of smoking steel into his face.

The redhead squirmed across the carpet, her hands clawing for her own fallen submachine gun. Bolan pressed the muzzle of his second weapon against her cheek and pinned her head to the floor. “One more move and I’ll turn your head into applesauce. You understand?”

The woman nodded, her eyes streaming and wincing as her lower lip split beneath the pressure of the submachine gun.

Bolan backed the weapon off her mouth. “Who are you?”

She glared up at Bolan in red-eyed defiance. Bolan reached into his jacket and clicked open his phone. He pressed a preset number and Assistant Director Finch answered on the first ring. “You have reached MI-5. This is Assistant Director Finch.”

“We spoke earlier today.”

Her voice replied curtly. “Yes.”

“I have something for you. In my room.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, you should send a team down here. You have three suspects.”

The redhead stared up in alarm. She was part of a four-man team.

“They’re suffering from various broken bones and contusions,” Bolan continued. “One at least appears to be of South African extraction.”

“South African?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Finch registered genuine surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I’ll have a team there in ten minutes.”

“I won’t be here.”

“I’m not entirely surprised.”

Bolan was about to hang up when Finch spoke. “You’re to be arrested on sight.”

“I’ll call you later.” Bolan clicked off. He didn’t have much time. “You.” He pointed the BXP back at the woman’s head. “You’re coming with me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

CIA safe house, London

“Running the prints now, Striker.”

Bolan had taken the woman’s fingerprints and faxed them to Kurtzman. She sat on a chair with her hands cuffed together in front of her and her ankles bound to the front chair legs with plastic zip restraints. The gun Bolan had held in his hand during the ten-minute drive to the safe house had kept the woman docile. Bolan had washed out her eyes with water. They were still red-veined from the gas and still glared bloody murder at Bolan.

Kurtzman got back to him almost instantly. “I have a hit on the Interpol database.”

The woman went rigid on the chair.

“What have you got?”

The computer whiz hit a key and a police photo of the woman popped up on the screen. “Sylvette MacJory, born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Attended Strathclyde University and received her degree in computer science. In 2005 she was accused and convicted of cybernetic crimes in the U.K., including identity theft and criminal hacking into the databases of several major U.K. financial institutions. Sentenced to five years, sentence reduced to two years probation and public service. Current residence in London. No further criminal record.”

Sylvette’s face clouded with rage.

“So who are your South African friends?” Bolan asked.

“Piss off, Yank!”

“You should try to come up with something more original than that.”

“You’re no cop, then.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re holding me illegally. I want my lawyer.”

“You’re right. I’m not a cop, and you’re not being held.” Bolan clicked open his phone and punched a button. “You’ve been abducted.”

MacJory swallowed with difficulty as her position became more clear to her.

Assistant Director Finch answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“Did you get the package I left you?”

“Yes,” Finch admitted.

“I have another.”

There followed an appalled silence. “Listen to me. You really must—”

“Her name is Sylvette MacJory. You’ll have her in your files. Felony computer hacker. She was attempting to get into my laptop.”

“Did you know we detected pepper spray within the room?”

“She tried to get into my laptop,” Bolan reiterated.

Finch tried a different tack. “You shot one of the suspects twenty-two times. He survived only because he was wearing body armor.”

“I shot him twenty-two times precisely because he was wearing body armor and I knew you would want him alive.”

“Mr.—”

“The large one out in the hall is South African. Did you get an ID on the other two?”

Bolan was pretty sure she would have hung up had she not been attempting to trace the call. The NSA satellite Bolan was bouncing his signal through made that a losing proposition, but it would take the MI-5 communications people a little while to figure that out. Finch let out a long, grudging breath. “You’re correct. The large one is Ruud Heitinga, South African citizen, as is the other, one Kew Timmer.”

“You get a bead on the man inside?”

“He was a bit of an anomaly. His papers say he is a French citizen named Guy Diddier. All of them have clammed up, however, call it a hunch, but I found Monsieur Diddier most un-Gallic in his behavior.”

Bolan was swiftly coming to the conclusion that Assistant Director Heloise Finch had earned her hunches the hard way. “So what did you do?”

“I called in a favor with French intelligence and ran the name. Diddier is a French citizen, but not by birth.”

Bolan’s intuition spoke to him. “He served a tour in the French Foreign Legion.”

Finch seemed pleased. “That is correct. He was originally an American citizen by the name of Gary Pope. He served four years in the California National Guard’s 223rd Infantry Regiment. Somewhere along the line, he got the romantic notion of joining the Legion. Once he’d been accepted, he took advantage of the Legion’s opportunity of identity change and after serving his tour successfully he accepted French citizenship.”

“Any line on the two South Africans?”

“Not yet, but I have every faith they are veterans of the South African Defense Force.”

Bolan agreed. “Ms. Finch, these individuals are mercenaries.”

“So it would seem, and how do you believe the girl fits in?”

Bolan glanced over at the hacker. “She may use a computer rather than a silenced submachine gun, but she’s a hired gun, nonetheless.”

“I agree.”

“Director, I find it very strange that the IRA is employing mercenaries.”

MacJory stared at Bolan strangely and then snapped her poker face back on. Bolan pretended to ignore the slip as Finch continued.

“It is indeed odd. It goes completely against their method of operation. By nature, mercenaries work for money and historically are notorious for switching sides. The terrorist wing of the IRA chooses its members for their absolute loyalty. They would never entrust any kind of sensitive operation to outsiders.”

“So someone else is in the game.”

“So it would appear.”

“Any ideas?”

“None whatsoever. The appearance of mercenaries in this situation is positively anomalous.”

“What’s their legal status, currently?”

“Well, their visas and passports are in order, and while they weren’t guests of the hotel there is currently no law in England against being beaten to a pulp in a hallway. However, we did find three automatic weapons on the premises. They are currently being held on suspicion and possible weapons charges.” Finch’s voice went slightly dry with sarcasm. “Since you took the liberty of kidnapping Miss MacJory, I suspect any evidence concerning her will be inadmissible in an English court of law.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“So what do you intend to do with her?”

Bolan raised the BXP. “Shoot her.”

MacJory started in her seat.

Finch shouted in alarm. “You can’t—” Bolan clicked his phone shut and stepped forward. MacJory cringed as far as her restraints would let her. Bolan pressed the muzzle of the BXP between her eyebrows and pinned her head to the back of the chair like an insect.

“You’re of no more use to me.”

“No!”

The safety clicked off beneath Bolan’s thumb with grim finality.

MacJory screamed. “Please!”

“Who do you work for!” Bolan roared.

The woman shook her head, crying. “I don’t know!”

“You’ve got five seconds.”

“Please—”

Bolan knew MacJory’s type. She wasn’t a terrorist. She was a genius. Breaking code and committing crimes in cyberspace was a game to her. Even after her conviction, she still didn’t believe she had done anything wrong. He wouldn’t shoot her, but he had to make her believe he would.

Nothing had prepared her for gutter-level, get-your-hands-dirty fieldwork.

“One…”

“Please!”

“Two…”

“I don’t know who I work for!”

“You’re working for the IRA. You’re a traitor to the U.K. Three.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Four…”

“I don’t know anything about the IRA!” The woman wept uncontrollably. “I swear it!”

Bolan read her body language and pulled the gun back. MacJory started to suck in a breath of relief and gave a strangled shriek as Bolan fired a burst into the ceiling. Plaster rained down on her, and he aimed the weapon at her again. “Okay, you’re a merc. Who brokered the deal? Who pays you?”

She shuddered with her betrayal. “Aegis…”

Bolan cocked his head slightly. “Aegis Global Security?”

“Yes! I swear! I freelance for Aegis!”

That was not good news. Aegis was one of the oldest, and in the controversial world of executive VIP protection, military advisement and “solutions by other means,” Aegis Global Security was one of the most respected.

Bolan clicked his phone open. Finch picked up midring. “Jesus, bloody—”

“She’s still alive and unharmed. She freelances for Aegis. I suspect the other three are permanent men on the roster.”

Finch was flabbergasted. “Aegis Global Security?”

“That seems to be the situation.”

“Not good.”

“No, it’s not. I’m going to turn Miss MacJory loose in a couple of hours, and I’ll let you know where you can find her.”

“Listen, I need you to—”

Bolan clicked off and went back to his computer. “You get all that?”

Kurtzman nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

“Get me everything you can on Aegis.” Bolan already knew a lot about it. “Where’s David McCarter?”

“You’ve got a bit of luck there. He’s in the U.K. right now visiting family.”

Bolan nodded. “I need him.”

Guernsey, The Channel Isles

“RED-HOT WILLY.” David McCarter stared at Bolan accusingly as he drove the Land Rover over the bleak, bumpy countryside of the island. “You know the man’s a bloody legend.”

Bolan glanced off across the gray chop of the English Channel toward Normandy. “Red-Hot” Willy was indeed a legend. The man’s biography read like an adventure novel. A television series on the BBC and two lines of pulp fiction paperbacks had been loosely based on his life. Just about anyone who had ever been in the military community had heard of Colonel William Glen-Patrick. However in England, formally, he was Lord William Glen-Patrick. The Glen-Patrick line had held the title of baron in England since the Middle Ages. Like a Dickens novel, little Lord Willy had been orphaned at the age of five when his parents had crashed their Lotus Elan into the wall of a cattle enclosure. The executors of his estate had been unscrupulous and absconded with the greater part of the family fortune, and by the time Willy had reached the age of seventeen the Glen-Patrick family had been bankrupt. Unable to pay his taxes, Lord William had sold the family castle and estates and used his family name to wangle a commission in the Life Guards, the most senior regiment in the British Army. He had served with distinction in Aden and Borneo and become the British army welterweight boxing champion. In the late 1970s he had joined the SAS, being one of the few members of the English peerage to ever successfully qualify and serve in English Special Forces. During the Falkland Island War, he had won the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery.

The wounds he’d received in the Falklands had forced him to retire from the British army, so he had taken his name and reputation and gone to West Africa, where he had gotten himself involved in the constant wars and revolutions. He’d come back with a personal fortune in diamonds. Throughout the 1980s Lord William had been famous for winning and losing fortunes at the baccarat tables in Monaco, reaching a respectable ranking on the Grand Prix circuit when not crashing his own personal sports cars, climbing Mount Everest and K2, sailing around the world, dating a different girl every month and even occasionally flexing his hereditary right as an English peer to cast his vote in the House of Lords. He was a nobleman, a hero, a mercenary, a professional adventurer and a dilettante. For decades he had been constant fodder for the British tabloids and earned the sobriquet “Red-Hot” Willy.

In the military community he was known most for pioneering what may have been the first VIP/executive protection mercenary outfit. In West Africa, war and violence had been and still were endemic. At the same time gold and diamonds flowed out of the area and guns and money flowed in. Glen-Patrick had seen the need not just for bodyguards for VIPs, but men who were soldiers in their own right. Developers, businessmen, African royalty and heads of state needed more than just bullet shields. Glen-Patrick had used the contacts he’d made in the army and the SAS, finding highly qualified men from around the world not just to guard VIPs, their families and business interests, but men who would act proactively. Glen-Patrick had developed a simple, three-step plan. When a threat was determined, it would be bought off. If it couldn’t be bought off, it would be intimidated. If it couldn’t be intimidated, it would be eliminated.

The work had been lucrative, but it was the international business contacts he had made that had made him a millionaire.

Lord William had slowed down upon reaching the age of sixty and retired to an estate on the Isle of Guernsey, living with three women, none of whom he was married to, and again, very occasionally, casting his vote in the House of Lords, usually on environmental issues. His mercenary group had gone from Aegis Incorporated to Aegis Global Security and was reputed to be less bloodthirsty in the new century. According to its prospectus, it was doing a thriving business in Iraq and Afghanistan.