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While the trio of rounds from the Executioner’s assault rifle had driven the man with the mustache several paces backward into a desk, they hadn’t stopped him. The Rough Rider began to raise his Uzi again, and more rounds from another direction whizzed past the Executioner’s ears, sounding like angry bees.
Bolan’s next triburst was aimed at his target’s head. The first slug took off the upper right half of his face and blew brains, blood and fragments of skull out the back of his head. The second and third rounds disappeared somewhere in the gore before the Rough Rider slumped to the tile floor in front of the desk.
The Executioner ducked behind the popcorn machine as more rounds from behind the tellers’ windows zipped past him. As he hit the floor, a barrage of fire from a variety of weapons shattered the glass of the popcorn machine and tore through the thin red metal stand.
Suddenly, the First Fidelity Bank lobby appeared to be snowing popcorn and glass, both raining over Bolan where he lay on his side. The unusual combined odor of exploding gunpowder, popcorn and butter filled the Executioner’s nostrils.
Several of the rounds that had ripped through the red metal stand had missed Bolan by millimeters. And the bank robbers knew that sooner or later, if they simply kept peppering the popcorn machine with fire, some of their rounds would find vital organs.
The Executioner knew that, too. Slinging the M-16 over his shoulder, he suddenly dived from behind the machine into the open. Hitting the floor on his right shoulder, he rolled under several bursts of fire just inches above him. The shoulder roll took him all the way to the desk where the man with the mustache lay in death, and the Executioner squeezed in between the dead man and the desk, using them both for cover now. He saw a flash of blue as one of the Rough Riders raised his head to fire through a teller’s window.
Bolan triggered his M-16. The blue stocking cap blew off the top of the man’s head. So did half of the head itself.
Two men in coveralls suddenly emerged through a formerly closed door next to the tellers’ windows. Behind them, Bolan could see a private office. An employee wearing the same maroon polo shirt lay on the floor, bloody and battered but breathing.
Both of the men coming out the door carried Uzis, and both were well over six feet and broad shouldered. They made the mistake of trying to exit the office at the same time, and for a split second wedged themselves together in the doorway in a scene worthy of The Three Stooges. But the Uzis kept all humor out of the Executioner’s brain as he flipped the M-16’s selector switch to semiauto, then put one 5.56 mm bullet between each man’s eyes.
They fell to the floor, dead.
For a moment, the gunfire died down and Bolan heard the sounds of running footsteps outside the building. He smiled grimly to himself. Glasser and his men were on the way. Their arrival was confirmed by the sounds of window glass breaking and side exit doors being rammed open.
Quickly, Bolan assessed the situation. The fact that the gunfire had died down meant there were a limited number of men who could see him. Which, in turn, meant the Rough Riders had to be scattered throughout the bank. The breaking glass and doors being rammed meant Glasser’s SWAT teams were entering the bank at various positions. They would take care of the offices, vault area and other rooms behind the tellers’ windows. But there was still one place just off the lobby that needed attention. The safe-deposit box room. And the Executioner was the most likely candidate to cover it.
Bolan could see the barred door was on the other side of the lobby, across from him.
And the barred door was open.
The Executioner squeezed out from between the desk and the dead man with the mustache, the M-16 aimed toward the tellers’ windows. There was always a chance that he’d been wrong in his assessment as to the cease-fire, and one or more Rough Riders might be hidden back there, just waiting for an opportunity such as Bolan was now giving him.
But such was not the case. Making his way silently toward the safe-deposit box door, trying to avoid the broken glass, shreds of metal, popcorn and anything else that might make a sound and alert the men in the safe-deposit box room that he was coming.
When he reached the door, the Executioner dropped to one knee and peered inside. Row upon row of safe-deposit boxes were stacked to a height of seven feet or so, and they prevented him from seeing anyone in the room.
But they didn’t prevent his hearing the conversation.
“I can’t open them,” a young female voice pleaded between sobs. “It takes both our key and the customers’.”
“Then you’d better find some other way of getting into them,” said the same cigarette-smoking voice Bolan had heard over Glasser’s cell phone. “Because if I have to shoot the damn things open, and any jewelry or other valuables get damaged, my next shot is going right between those pretty little tits of yours.”
The sobs increased in volume.
A moment later, a lone shot was fired, but Bolan continued to hear the young woman cry. So the round had gone into one of the boxes rather than her chest.
But it was only a matter of time before the raspy voice grew impatient, realized they were already under attack and killed her in order to concentrate his efforts on escape.
Because by now the Rough Riders could be pretty sure that neither a helicopter nor an airplane was in their immediate future.
“Find anything, Carl?” the raspy voice asked.
“Nah,” said a new voice. “Nothing we can use anyway.”
“Then shoot the next one.”
Bolan squeezed through the small opening between the barred door and the wall, trying not to move the door in case its hinges needed oiling. When he’d accomplished that feat, he stayed low, duck-walking his way past the several rows of safe-deposit boxes until he came to a stack just beyond where the two men and the woman were standing. At least he thought there were only two men—because only two men had spoken. He reminded himself that there could be more Rough Riders there, assisting in the pilfering of the boxes, who had kept quiet.
Bolan flipped the selector switch to safety and set the M-16 on the floor. Slowly and silently he drew the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. If there were more than just the two men, he would take out as many as he could with the near silent Beretta. With any luck, he’d capture the man with the raspy voice alive. He hoped it went down that way at least. Dead men not only told no tales, but they also gave up no intelligence information.
But it was not to be.
Behind them, through the lobby and at the rear of the bank, came the roar of gunfire as Glasser’s SWAT teams entered the building and engaged the Rough Riders spread throughout the bank. The raspy voice on the other side of the stack of steel boxes said, “Okay, that’s it. We need to get out of here. Kill her, Carl, and let’s get going.”
Bolan could wait no longer.
Still squatting, the Executioner leaned around the corner and saw a short, stocky man with a three-day growth of beard lifting a Government Model 1911 .45 to the temple of the openly crying female bank employee. He had already made contact with the muzzle of the .45 by the time the Executioner lined up the Beretta’s sights on him and flipped the selector to semiauto as he’d done with the M-16. But his other suspicions had been accurate. Besides the man with the unfiltered cigarette voice, three more armed men in coveralls stool in the aisle in front of the boxes.
One 9 mm round was all it would take to save the young woman, but it would have to be precisely placed, and he could control that placement better with the Beretta in semiauto mode. The shot would have to go directly into the Rough Rider’s brain stem and shut down all motor functions, lest the man called Carl pulled the trigger of the .45 in a convulsion of death.
Taking a deep breath, the Executioner let out half of it, stopped, then gently squeezed the Beretta’s trigger. The sound suppressor coughed out the bullet. A subsonic, semijacketed hollowpoint entered the man’s brain, and he dropped the .45 as he fell to the floor.
But the shot had drawn the attention of the other men down the aisle toward Bolan, and one of the coveralled men now raised a Heckler & Koch MP-5. With no time to switch to 3-round-burst mode, the Executioner aimed carefully again, hitting the main squarely in the nose. In his peripheral vision, he saw the raspy-voiced man he assumed was the leader take off down the aisle, away from him. But he had no chance to stop him because the second of the third men was now trying to fix the sights of a Glock on the Executioner.
Bolan remembered the vest on the man with the mustache and again aimed high. The shot took the Rough Rider in the scalp. But it was not a kill shot. The man got off one wild 10 mm round from his large-framed Glock. Miraculously it missed both Bolan and the female bank employee. The Executioner fired again.
And this time, his near silent 9 mm round caught the man in the right eye.
The only man left had taken off his ski mask completely, and Bolan could see it stuffed in a side pocket of the coveralls. He fired once more, and the 9 mm slug took out the last Rough Rider’s left eye.
All of the men who had accompanied the raspy-voiced leader into the safe-deposit room were dead.
Bolan rushed up to the young woman, who was sniffling between sobs. “You all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thank you,” she managed through the crying.
Bolan looked past her to the end of the aisle. The leader of the Rough Riders was nowhere to be seen. The Executioner carefully searched the rest of the room, but was not surprised when the cigarette smoker didn’t turn up.
The man had used his own troops to give him time to escape.
Picking up his M-16 as he left the room, Bolan could still hear gunfire coming from the rear of the bank. One of the SWAT men was in the lobby, personally holding the front door open for the terrified hostages and telling each one to stay close—they’d need statements from them all.
“Anybody in the teller’s area?” Bolan asked the man as he passed.
The SWAT trooper shook his head. “What’s left of them is in the back. They’ve barricaded themselves in the vault.”
Bolan stopped in his tracks. “You get a look at the vault?” he asked.
The SWAT man nodded.
“Can the door be opened from the inside once it’s locked?”
The man holding the door for the hostages nodded. “I just caught a glance at it earlier when I ran by. And I’m no safe expert, but it looked like it to me.”
Bolan hurried through the swinging door, stepping over several dead bodies in coveralls as he made his way to the back of the bank. He passed several private offices as he ran down an empty hallway. Turning a corner, he passed two more SWAT team members who lowered their AR-15s as soon as they recognized him.
The two men appeared to have gotten Glasser’s orders that Bolan was in charge. They both saluted as he ran by.
At the end of the hallway, Bolan found both the closed and locked vault door, and SWAT Captain Tom Glasser along with more of his men. A half dozen more dead Rough Riders, all dressed in coveralls and blue stocking caps, had been piled unceremoniously against the wall, out of the way.
Which was fine with the Executioner. Terrorists deserved no ceremony when they were righteously killed.
“What’s going down?” the Executioner asked the recent Stony Man Farm graduate.
Glasser’s eyes reflected a deep confusion. “They’ve barricaded themselves in the vault, and they’ve got hostages,” he said. “It’s really no different than when they held the whole bank a few minutes ago. The playing field’s just become smaller.”
“How many of them left?” Bolan asked.
“The bad guys? Five, maybe six. And they’ve got three or four hostages. Can’t be certain.” He paused a second, then went on. “That raspy voice we heard on the phone?”
“Yeah?” the Executioner said.
“He’s one of them.”
Bolan nodded. “Same demands?” he asked.
Glasser nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “but at least we can probably get them to settle for a smaller helicopter this time.”
The Executioner nodded at the attempt at dark humor on Glasser’s part. It was one of the ways cops and soldiers relieved tension.
Then he turned and looked at the vault door.
There would be no skylight to bust through here.
So he would have to come up with an alternate plan, and come up with it fast.
2
“You inside the vault!” the Executioner yelled at the top of his lungs. “Can you hear me?” He got no response. But a few seconds later, the walkie-talkie on Glasser’s hip screeched. Then the voice of a female dispatcher said, “Base to SWAT 1. Come in, SWAT 1.”
Glasser leaned toward the microphone on his shoulder and said, “SWAT 1, here.”
“Ten-four, SWAT 1,” the woman on the other end said. “Be advised we just received a cell phone call from a man claiming to be inside the vault at your location. He wants your cell phone number. Should I give it to him?”
Glasser’s face turned into a mask of both outrage and astonishment. “Of course you should give it to him,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The woman on the other end either didn’t catch the SWAT captain’s tone or didn’t care. Her voice remained colorless. “Ten-four, SWAT 1,” she said, then ended the call.
Bolan and Glasser glanced at each other as they waited for the call they suspected would be coming from inside the vault. The Executioner had not been surprised that he’d gotten no response to his yelling—the vault door was thick steel and sealed tightly around the edges. What did surprise him was that the Rough Rider’s cell phone had worked from within the vault. He’d have bet against it. But there was no rhyme or reason to cell phones, it seemed, and he was glad he’d been wrong.
Without some way to communicate with the Rough Riders still alive inside the vault they’d remain at this stalemate indefinitely.
Less than a minute after the radio transmission had taken place, Glasser’s cell phone rang. Pulling it from his belt, he glanced to the Executioner.
Bolan reached out for it, and Glasser gave him the phone. Bolan thumbed the talk button, pressed the instrument to his ear and said, “Go ahead.”
“We seem to be at a Mexican standoff,” said the same raspy voice Bolan had heard over the cell phone’s speakerphone earlier.
“I think we’ve got a slight advantage over you,” the Executioner came back. “We’ve got access to all the food and water we need out here. We can just wait you out. Of course you could try eating the money all around you in there. Try the hundreds—I hear they’re the best.”
“Nice try,” said the gravelly voice. “But you don’t have the advantage. We do. You see, any time I decide to do it, my men and I can kill the bank people in here, drop our weapons, then open the door and come out with our hands up.” He laughed in a low, guttural tone. “You’re cops. We’ll be unarmed and you’ll have to take us into custody instead of killing us.”
Bolan turned and walked away from the other men, going to the opposite end of the hallway, out of earshot. In a whisper, he said, “Everybody out here is a cop except me. And I promise you that if you kill those innocent people in there with you, I’ll gut shoot every one of you and make sure you die slow.”
“Bullshit,” rasped the voice inside the vault. “If you weren’t a cop, you wouldn’t even be in the bank right now.”
Bolan’s jaw set firmly, his teeth grinding together slightly. It was the response he’d expected, so he wasn’t surprised. Ironically, it was the truth. He would execute the remaining men if they harmed their innocent hostages. But the man with the cigarette voice would never believe it.
“Okay,” the Executioner said. “You have some plan on how we can all come out of this alive?”
“I’ve already given you the plan,” the voice said. “Five million, and a chopper to take us to the airport.” Then, ironically, he repeated what Glasser had said as a joke. “We can settle for a smaller helicopter now. But it’ll need to carry nine people.”
“How many hostages do you have?” Bolan asked.
“Four.”
“I’ll expect you to let one of them go when the helicopter arrives, you get the five million, and you’re onboard.”
“Fair enough,” the Rough Rider said. “Got a pregnant woman in here I’ll give you just to show good faith. Sort of ‘two for the price of one’ deal.” He laughed over the phone, but the laughter brought on another coughing fit.
Bolan paused. Once the pregnant woman had been freed, there would be five of the terrorists, including the man on the phone, still alive to deal with. That could be crucial information down the road. “I’ll expect you to give me the other three people at the airport,” he said.
“I’ll give you two of the three at the airport.” the Rough Rider coughed.
“What do you plan to do with the last one?” the Executioner asked.
“I’ll cut him loose him when we land.” A chuckle brought on another cough. “You’ll understand, I’m sure, if I don’t tell you exactly where that’s going to be.”
The Executioner noted that the raspy voice rose a little with the man’s final words. That was one of the indicators of a lie. Letting the final hostage go free when they landed would be too risky. What the cigarette-smoking Rough Rider really had planned was to kill the final hostage. They’d either throw him out of the plane once they were in the air or shoot him or cut his throat.
Which meant the Executioner couldn’t afford to let them reach the airplane. He had to end this game either before they got into the chopper or somewhere between the helicopter and the airplane.
“All right,” Bolan said into Glasser’s cell phone. “When do you plan to come out?” He paused a second, then said, “I’d like to get all this done before you die of emphysema.”
An eerie silence filled the wireless cell phone connection, and Bolan could tell he’d hit a sore sport with the man. The raspy-voiced Rough Rider either did have emphysema or lung cancer or some smoking-related disease that was slowly killing him.
Which, Bolan reminded himself, only made the man more dangerous and unpredictable. Men who knew they were dying anyway were often willing to take chances that other men weren’t.
“We’re coming out right now,” the grating voice finally said into his cell phone. “So you boys move down to the end of the hall unless you want some dead bank employees on your hands.”
The Executioner turned toward Glasser and the other SWAT men gathered around him. But he had no need to issue an order. All of them double-timed it down to the other end of the hall. Bolan followed them.
