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“Are you away from the door yet?” the gravelly voice asked.
“We are,” the Executioner said.
The vault door began to swing slowly open. Then a blue-ski-masked face peered around the heavy steel at Bolan and the rest of the SWAT warriors. Seemingly satisfied, the man wearing the mask and coveralls pushed the vault door the rest of the way open to the wall, making sure no one was hiding behind it.
Stepping brazenly out of the vault, the man who had opened the door coughed as he waved for the men still inside to come out. One by one, they did.
But it wasn’t really one by one. More like two by two. Because three of the men had duct-taped pistols to the backs of the hostages’ heads. More duct tape secured the guns to the Rough Riders’ hands, and a strip of the sticky gray tape was across the eyes of the young man and two women who were pushed out and down the hall. All of the terrorists had pulled their blue ski masks down over their faces again. Their right hands held the pistols. Two AK-47s and an M-16 similar to Bolan’s were slung over their left shoulders, with their left hands grasping the rifles and their fingers inside the trigger guard.
Only the pregnant woman was free of the tape. She was ushered out last, a ski-masked Rough Rider jamming a revolver into her cheek as he guided her down the hall with his other hand.
The gravelly voiced man brought up the rear, cutting off his cell phone and dropping it into a pocket in his coveralls.
Bolan punched the Off button and returned Glasser’s phone to the SWAT commander.
As the procession walked toward them, Bolan stepped slowly forward, reaching out for the pregnant woman.
“No!” the cigarette smoker shouted, bringing up his M-16 and aiming it at the Executioner. The rest of the Rough Riders ground to a halt.
“You get her after we get the five million, and after we’re on the helicopter.”
Bolan nodded and stepped back. At this point, there was nothing else he could do.
The Rough Riders and their prisoners turned the corner and walked down the hall that led to the cashiers’ windows, then the lobby. Bolan, Glasser and the other SWAT men who had been inside the bank with them followed. When they reached the lobby, they saw more SWAT personnel, their AR-15s aimed at the Rough Riders.
Bolan held out a hand, palm down, then lowered it.
The SWAT men let their rifles fall to the end of their slings.
Outside, the Executioner could hear the whopping sound of helicopter blades. As he followed the Rough Riders and hostages through the front door of the bank he saw not one but two small choppers. The markings on their sides announced to the world that they were Kansas City Police aircraft.
The man with the hoarse voice turned in anger. “I said one helicopter,” he practically spit. “And neither one of those is big enough for all of us.”
A sandy-haired man in his late thirties, wearing a suit more expensive than any cop could afford, stepped forward out of the crowd of uniformed and plainclothes officers. “Sir, I’m Peter Johnson, Kansas City Police media officer. I’m sorry, but this was the best we could do at such short notice. After all, you only gave us twenty minutes.” He paused, the smile on his face forced. Bolan also noticed his hands trembling slightly at his sides. “You’re welcome to use both of the helicopters, of course.”
Bolan continued to watch the media officer. Peter Johnson wasn’t used to getting this close to the fire, and the man could feel his eyebrows getting singed. He probably wasn’t even a commissioned police officer—more of a public-relations man. And he wanted his part in this little minidrama over quickly.
“You’re more than welcome to both helicopters,” Johnson said again, his voice shaking.
For a moment, the man with the raspy voice seemed frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Then he motioned for two of the men holding the pistols to the backs of the hostages’ heads toward one chopper. The man guiding the pregnant woman went with them. The rest started toward the other helicopter.
Bolan frowned. This new kink in the situation both helped and hurt. It would be good to have the armed men separated so they had less collective firepower. But separating the hostages would make them more difficult to rescue. If the men in one helicopter heard gunfire from the other, they’d immediately pull the triggers on their duct-taped pistols.
The Executioner watched as the Rough Riders pushed their hostages into the choppers and took seats. The man with the rough voice took the arm of the pregnant woman and shoved her onboard with the others. “I’ve changed my mind,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Since you welched on the single-helicopter agreement, I think we’ll just keep this lady and the little bastard in her belly a while longer.”
Bolan wasn’t surprised. But the man’s sudden refusal to keep his word settled a question that had been in the Executioner’s mind ever since the hostages had been taken. If the man would lie about one thing, he’d lie about others. For all Bolan knew, he would keep all of the hostages when they got to the airplane, then kill every last one of them once they were in the air.
The bottom line was that the Executioner couldn’t afford to even let these men get off the ground in the helicopters.
As soon as the Rough Riders and their hostages were seated, the man with the gravelly voice shouted out, “Where’s the money?”
A uniformed officer holding a briefcase started past Bolan toward the choppers, but Bolan reached for the briefcase himself.
As he so often did, the Executioner came up with his plan of attack suddenly, ironing out the weak points in a few seconds. No, he could not allow the helicopters to take to the air—there was no third chopper handy. The KC police had wisely assumed that the Rough Riders would be on the lookout for an aerial tail. Which meant the terrorists and their hostages would reach the airport and be gone long before he got there via automobile.
It was time to act. The situation was much like he’d faced in the lobby only a few minutes earlier, when the man named Carl had held the .45 to the female bank employee’s head. The difference was that instead of one life to save, this time he had four. And it would all have to be done before the men holding the pistols could react and pull the triggers of the guns taped to the hostages’ heads.
Holding the briefcase in his left hand, the Executioner strode purposefully toward the chopper where the man with the raspy voice sat next to the pilot. With a quick glance to the other chopper, he made sure he was at an angle at which his actions could not be seen. Lifting the briefcase upward, he set it in the gravelly voiced man’s lap. Then, in one smooth, lightning-fast motion, he drew the sound-suppressed Beretta from his shoulder holster.
It took a little less than a quarter of a second for Bolan to get the first shot off and into the brain stem of a Rough Rider holding a Walther PPK taped to the head of a pretty young blond-haired woman. Another quarter of a second, and the other terrorist holding a .357 Magnum pistol taped to the young male hostage’s head went brain dead, as well.
The man with the raspy voice had just had time to look up from the opened briefcase in his lap when Bolan stuck the sound suppressed Beretta into the guy’s mouth and pulled the trigger.
The Executioner had wanted this man alive so he could question him. But it hadn’t worked out that way. So be it, Bolan thought. He’d just have to find another method of learning the ins and outs of the Rough Riders.
Less than one second had elapsed when the Executioner closed the briefcase, hid the Beretta behind it and started toward the other chopper. The angle of the sun made it difficult to see details inside the chopper. But at least he saw no flurries of movement that led him to believe the Rough Riders inside knew what had just happened in the other chopper.
He hoped.
“What are you doin’ bringin’ that thing here?” said a Rough Rider in a slow Southern accent. “It ain’t me who needs to check the money.” As Bolan walked confidently on, a cloud drifted over the sun behind him as if by an act of God, and suddenly he could see clearly into the helicopter. The man who had spoken had his hand taped to the gun which was, in turn, taped to the back of the head of a short, pretty brunette.
“Don’t ask me,” the Executioner said, simply to stall for time while he walked the last several steps. “Your boss told me to come show it to you, too.”
It was enough to confuse the men in the second chopper while Bolan took the final steps to the open helicopter door. When his thighs were pressed against the deck, he dropped the briefcase and put another near silent 9 mm round into the brain stem of the man with the taped hand.
The final Rough Rider was the one who had guided the pregnant woman out of the vault. And though he had the muzzle of his .45 pressed against her head now, it wasn’t taped. And he chose to swing his weapon toward the Executioner rather than kill the woman.
It was a mistake he would not live long enough to regret.
The man had the big automatic halfway to Bolan’s chest when the Executioner fired his last round into the head. The .45 went off but blew past Bolan’s side, harmlessly entering the bank through the broken window to lodge itself somewhere inside the lobby.
Suddenly, all of the Rough Riders were dead.
Bolan looked at the trembling little brunette and said softly, “Relax. It’s all over.” He reached up and flipped the safety on the gun still taped to the back of her head, then pulled a TOPS Special Assault Weapon knife—more usually referred to simply as a SAW—from the sheath on his belt. Carefully, he began cutting the tape away from the young woman’s head. Both she and the pregnant woman were crying, and Bolan had to stop the mother-to-be from hugging him. “Careful,” he smiled as her arms reached out. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your hairdo.”
The woman giggled nervously. “My hair doesn’t seem very important right now,” she said, and circled her arms around the Executioner’s chest, pressing her tear-stained cheek against his as well.
Bolan felt her extended abdomen against his belly. Inside was a totally innocent little boy or girl—a totally innocent baby who had come within a hair of dying by the hand of a group of whacked out, home-grown American terrorists. If not for him, both mother and child would more than likely be dead, and in a sudden epiphany the Executioner was reminded why he’d been put on this planet called Earth and given the special abilities that he had.
To save the weak and innocent from the strong and evil.
Bolan looked back toward the other chopper.
Glasser and one of his SWAT team men were cutting the pistols away from the hostages heads as Bolan had done. The rest of the men stood back, waiting.
As he started toward Tom Glasser, the cell phone in one of the pockets of his blacksuit suddenly rang.
The Executioner walked back into the bank lobby and thumbed the Talk button. “Striker,” he said.
“Hello, big guy,” came the voice of Hal Brognola from the other end of the line. “Anything happening on your end?”
Bolan suppressed a chuckle. “No, Hal,” he said. “Things are actually pretty quiet where I am now.”
“Yeah, now it is,” Brognola said. “But ten minutes ago we were watching the whole bank thing go down on FOX news.”
Bolan stiffened slightly. “Was I on it?” he asked. The last thing he needed was his face splattered all over the newspapers.
“I saw you,” Brognola said. “But there was never a clear shot of your face. The newshounds and ambulance chasers must have been using long-range equipment because the Kansas City PD wouldn’t let them within a country mile of the action. I don’t think you have anything to worry about in regard to being IDed.” The high-ranking Justice official and director of Stony Man Farm’s Sensitive Operations Group paused long enough to take a breath, and Bolan could almost see the unlit cigar sticking out between his teeth.
“Hold on,” Brognola said. “Because we’re about to get hooked into a three-way conference call to the White House.”
Bolan frowned but didn’t speak. While he often took advantage of the equipment, computers, communication networking and other benefits of Stony Man Farm, in truth he answered to no one, though he did operate with the sanction of the President of the United States. He rarely talked to the Man. The fact was, when he and the President actually did speak, it was always something big. Very big. Usually of global importance.
“Hang on a few seconds,” Brognola said. “Aaron’s connecting the three-way call right now.” Aaron was Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man Farm’s computer wizard.
Outside, sirens sounded in the distance. Bolan waited silently as they grew louder, and then watched as ambulances and hearses arrived to cart off the bodies of the Rough Riders. He wondered exactly what was going on in Washington. The big story currently was that Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah—based in Lebanon—was firing short-range missiles and rockets at each other with far more innocent civilians being killed than soldiers or militia. It had all started over the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, and quickly escalated into a full-scale war.
Phoenix Force—one of the counterterrorist groups that worked out of Stony Man Farm—was in Beirut right now, trying to cull the terrorists from the innocent Lebanese among whom Hezbollah hid. So the Executioner suspected this call from the President meant he was about to join the other Stony Man Farm crew in the Middle East.
Bolan was rarely wrong. But this was one of those rare times.
“Hello, Hal?” the President’s voice finally said over the line.
“Hello, Mr. President,” Brognola replied. “I’m here. And Striker’s tapped in with us, as well.”
“Hello, Striker,” the Man said.
“Mr. President,” Bolan said. The noise level outside had risen again to the point where it was hard to hear the voices over the cell phone, so he moved into the private office just off the lobby and closed the door behind him. Through the glass wall he could see white-clad EMTs entering the bank to begin removing the dead men up and down the halls. And through the window to the street, he watched the Kansas City SWAT teams and other cops break into small groups to discuss what had just happened.
“We’ve got a problem,” the President declared. “Actually, we’ve got a lot of them.” He paused to draw in a breath. “But we’ve got one big problem, and you’re the only man I trust to handle it. What’s probably the worst, most organized threat to this country that’s ever come across the board is sneaking in under the radar.” He paused again. “If it’s successful, it’ll make 9/11 look like a Sunday School weenie roast.”
Bolan waited silently. He knew the Man would go on as soon as he’d picked the right words.
“You’ll probably find this as hard to believe as I did at first,” the Man finally said, “but an alliance has been struck between the Rough Riders and Hamas.”
Bolan thought about the two groups for a moment. The Rough Riders were fascists who believed in an America that was only for short-haired, white-skinned men and women—preferably of Aryan or Anglo-Saxon heritage.
Hamas, on the other hand, operated throughout the Middle East, with clandestine cells spread all over the world, just waiting to be called upon to create their own versions of September 11, 2001.
Two more disparate terrorist groups could not be found on the face of the Earth.
“You’ll excuse me, sir,” Bolan said, “if it takes me a few seconds to digest that thought.”
“I thought you’d find it as hard to believe as I did,” the President said. “But I’m afraid it’s true.”
“May I ask how you came upon this information?” the Executioner said.
The President sighed. “The CIA got it first. They’ve had a mole inside Hamas for some time now.”
“Can this intel be confirmed?” Bolan asked.
“It’s confirmed,” the President said. “The FBI has a plant inside the Rough Riders. I just got off the phone with their director. The same story came from their informant.”
Bolan felt his forehead furrowing. “These two groups have nothing in common upon which to base an alliance,” he said. “Except the downfall of freedom, democracy and the United States. Their ideologies couldn’t be more different.”
“That seems to be enough for them,” the Man said. “At least for now.”
“Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment if I might, sir,” Bolan said, still frowning. “Assuming they were successful in overthrowing the U.S. government. What do they plan to do then?”
“I don’t know,” the President answered. “And according to the two snitches, neither do the Rough Riders or Hamas. But that doesn’t seem to bother them at this juncture. It appears that they’re willing to put their differences aside for the time being.”
“They’d have to go to war with each other eventually,” the Executioner said.
“Yes,” the Man said. “But like I said, they appear to have agreed to put that on the back burner in order to achieve their initial, common goal.”
“Destroying us,” Bolan said.
“Exactly,” the President affirmed.
“What else do we know?” Bolan asked.
“Not a lot,” the President said. “But both sources report that there’s a list of planned terrorist strikes.”
Bolan stopped speaking as a white-clad man opened the door to the office and looked inside. Seeing no bodies on the floor, and the Executioner’s head shake, he closed the door again and disappeared. “How do we get hold of this list?”
“That’s one of the things I’m hoping you can find out,” the Man said. “Neither the Hamas or Rough Rider informant is high enough up the food chain to have access to it, or know how to get to it. The Rough Rider infiltrator seems to know a little more. According to him, some of the strikes are to be carried out by Hamas, and others by the Rough Riders. But they also have some joint operations planned just to confuse police, militaries and governments around the world.”
“Have you got a place for me to start?” Bolan asked the President.
“The CIA’s informant heard that something’s about to go down at the American Embassy in Paris,” the President said. “But that’s all he knows. He’s got the where and who—Haas—but not the when or how.”
“Tell me,” the Executioner said. “Am I going to have access to either or both informants?”
“You’ll have access to both,” the Man said.
“And what kind of turf-jealousy problems am I going to have to deal with out of the CIA and FBI?”
“No more than the usual.” The President laughed softly. “I’ve ordered both directors to inform their men that you’ve got free rein. I took the liberty of giving them your Matt Cooper name. I hope that’s all right.’
“That’s fine.”
“Anyway,” the Man said. “If you need any help from the FBI or CIA, they’ve been ordered to give it to you. On the other hand, if you want them out of your way, they’re to make themselves scarce.”
“With all due respect to both agencies,” the Executioner said, “I’d prefer the latter. At least for now.”
“Then I’ll make two more phone calls as soon as we hang up,” the Man said. “One man from each agency can hook you up with the informants. Then they’ll disappear.” The President paused for a moment, then added, “But are you sure you don’t at least want one or two men to watch your back?”
The bodies had been cleared out of the building by now, and the Executioner walked back out of the office into the lobby again. With the phone still pressed to his ear, he looked through the broken window once more.
