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The soldier glanced at his friend. Turrin was already pushing up from the floor and appeared to be okay. Bolan was on his feet and moving slowly down the hallway, hugging the wall and waiting for his opponent to come back into view.
The guy was going to bolt or risk another shot at the Americans. Either way, Bolan needed to prepare himself to react.
He saw a blur of motion at the doorway. The gunner had popped back into view, the barrel of his SMG hunting for a target. In addition to his gun, half of his face and one of his shoulders was visible.
A burst of gunfire screamed down the hallway, but again left Bolan and Turrin unharmed.
The H&K churned out a short burst. The bullets drilled into the gunner’s exposed shoulder. A cry of pain burst from the guy’s mouth. His weapon fell from his hand and clattered to the floor.
Surging to the doorway, Bolan caught the guy on his knees. The fabric covering the man’s left shoulder was ripped and darkened with blood. His hand was under his jacket as he struggled to pull something free.
Bolan’s right foot lashed out and caught the man in the chin. The kick knocked the guy backward and caused him to land on his injured shoulder, eliciting another yelp from him.
Bolan moved through the door and locked the H&K’s barrel on the man’s chest.
The hardman froze and then tried to raise both hands. The move apparently sent bolts of pain coursing through him because he inhaled sharply and grimaced. Prying his eyes open, he raised his good hand.
Bolan reached down, grabbed a handful of the guy’s jacket and yanked him to his feet. He spun the guy and shoved him face-first against a wall.
Looking at Turrin, he said, “You do the pat-down.”
“Jesus, why do I always have to frisk these guys?”
“Nimble fingers.”
Scowling, Turrin stepped forward and searched the man. His hand disappeared under the guy’s jacket and came out with a Walther .380. Handing it to Bolan, he continued the frisk, ultimately turning up a couple of magazines for the Walther and a folding knife.
He pocketed the knife.
Bolan ejected the magazine from the Walther and tossed it aside. He then threw the empty pistol in the opposite direction.
Bolan turned the guy around.
The soldier pulled a field dressing from his pocket. Unwrapping it, he handed it to the man, who took it and gingerly placed it on his wound.
“You speak English?” Bolan asked.
“Yes.”
“Where’s the woman?”
The man hesitated. Bolan reached out and pushed down on the hand the man was using to hold the dressing in place. The man grimaced and moaned, bending slightly at the knees.
The captive cursed in French.
“Let me ask again,” Bolan said. “Where is she?”
The guy pushed himself up to his full height. He leaned against the wall for support, but glared at Bolan.
“Downstairs,” he said, forcing the word through clenched teeth.
“Downstairs where? And how do I get down there?”
The hardman opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and clamped his eyes closed for a couple of seconds, apparently riding out another wave of pain.
“Downstairs where?” Bolan repeated.
With some effort, the guy opened his eyes, turned his head left and gestured with his chin. Even that much movement seemed excruciating to the man. A double door stood a few yards away.
“Go through there,” he said. “Follow the hallway. There’s a freight elevator at the end of it...”
“Go on.”
“Hit the B2 button. Get off and...”
The hardman’s voice trailed off again. He looked pale and Bolan guessed the blood loss was weakening the guy.
“Get off on B2.”
“Three doors,” the guy said. “You want the second one.”
“Locked?”
The guy nodded. “Security card.”
“The one around your neck?”
Another nod.
Bolan took hold of the card and pulled up, drawing the lanyard over the other man’s head.
“How many guards down there?”
“How many have you killed?”
“Ten.”
“Two, maybe. They might have gone elsewhere.”
“Where’s Dumond?”
“Look, I already told you where the lady is. Isn’t that enough?”
“Answer the question.”
“I sent him away. I knew this was a lost cause,” Bellew said, licking his lips, “so I told him to go.”
“Where would he go?”
The guy’s eyes looked heavy and he was unsteady. Bolan guessed the effects of shock and blood loss were overtaking him.
“I don’t know. There’s Paris. There’s Africa.”
“Where in Africa?”
“Evergreen. Monet....” His voice was barely audible.
His eyes slammed shut and his body sagged. Bolan let him slide to the floor.
“Not much to go on,” Turrin said.
Bolan shrugged. “You look for Dumond,” he said. “I’ll find Rodriguez.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Turrin bolted up the stairs to the second floor in search of Dumond. He wanted to capture or kill the guy. If Dumond was in the house, Turrin guessed putting him down was going to require blasting through a line of well-armed thugs.
And maybe he wouldn’t make it. It was something he always knew yet tried not to think about. When his old friend Mack Bolan called on him for help, it almost always required putting his life on the line. Turrin expected it. It was one of the few things in life he’d made peace with.
Before he could reach the top of the stairs, a hardman rushed into view. The guy was lining up a shot at Turrin with his Steyr AUG. His mind and body conditioned by countless near-death experiences, Turrin triggered his Beretta. The handgun coughed discreetly and a 3-round burst of 9 mm bullets drilled into his adversary’s chest. Surprise flashed on the man’s features an instant before his body dropped to the floor at the head of the stairs.
Turrin stepped over the corpse, moved onto the second floor and ran his gaze over his surroundings. The stairs led into a semicircular landing. Ornate tiles covered the floor and crystal chandeliers lit the upstairs. Railed walkways ran on either side of the stairway, and across the landing a door opened into another corridor. Since the walkways were empty, Turrin crossed the landing and moved into the corridor. Three doors lined the right side and four stood on the opposite side.
The first two doors on Turrin’s right were open. He checked the first room quickly and found nothing. Inside the second room, he found an oak desk with a computer monitor on top of it. As he moved around the desk, he spotted the computer tower on the floor. The side was cracked open and fragments of circuit boards and other electronic guts were strewed over the floor. Apparently the PC had contained something of value. He made a mental note to check with the cyber team at the Farm to see whether he should try to recover it.
Slipping back through the door, he caught a fast-moving dark shape in his peripheral vision.
He spun in time to see a rangy man hurtling at him, his right arm pulled back, his hand clutching a gleaming knife. The guy was on him quickly. Turrin didn’t have time to swing the Beretta toward his attacker and squeeze off a shot. He saw the knife plunge at him and stepped sideways, letting the blade cut through empty air. As the knife slashed downward, the guy’s torso leaned forward, putting him slightly off balance. With his left hand, Turrin grabbed a handful of his attacker’s shirt and jerked him forward, hoping to send him hurtling into a wall. At the same time, Turrin used the extra space to bring the Beretta into play.
Unfortunately the guy caught his footing. His hand snaked out and, grabbing the wrist of Turrin’s gun hand, pushed it away so the little Fed couldn’t get a decent shot at him.
Balling his other hand into a fist, Turrin lashed out and flattened his adversary’s nose, causing the guy to moan. Turrin pressed the attack, thrusting an open hand up at the tip of the man’s nose and driving the broken cartilage into his brain. The guy’s fingers uncurled from Turrin’s wrist and he backpedaled a couple of steps before sinking to the floor.
The Stony Man warrior leaned against the wall, taking a moment to catch his breath as he watched a last shudder pass through the man at his feet.
Two down. How many to go?
Hell, it was time to find out.
Turrin quickly searched the rest of the second floor, but found no one. Figuring he’d check the third floor next, he headed down the corridor. As he hurried forward, he heard footsteps pounding down the stairway, then spotted three men.
The hardman in the lead saw Turrin and reacted. In the blink of an eye he fired off a shot from a handgun. The weapon’s report echoed through the enclosed space as Turrin dived to his right just a bullet passed through the air where he’d stood only a microsecond before.
His body hit the hard tile floor, and sent bolts of pain through his chest and right shoulder. However, he kept a firm hold on his pistol and rolled away from his opponents.
Raising his pistol, he spotted the same thug trying to get another bead on him. The Beretta churned out a triburst. Two of the rounds missed the guy by inches while the third bit into his biceps. Through a haze of pain, the guy fired off two more rounds, both of which slapped against the floor just in front of Turrin’s face.
Turrin adjusted the aim on the Beretta and squeezed off another triburst, the rounds sinking into the man’s stomach and doubling him over. Turrin had spotted Dumond and was swinging his gun toward the arms dealer when the second hardman stepped between them. The Beretta’s Parabellum rounds drilled into the man’s torso. He teetered on unsteady legs but was still able to fire off a single round that zinged over Turrin’s head. Another trio of bullets from the Beretta hit the teetering thug’s chest and he pitched forward, his body tumbling over the stairway railing.
Dumond was gone, and Turrin could hear rapid footsteps on the stairs. He had been so hyper-focused on the two guards he’d missed his target sprinting away. From outside the building, the little Fed could hear the whipping of helicopter blades.
Dropping the magazine from the Beretta and reloading, Turrin got to his feet, cursing, then sprinted for the steps. By the time he reached them, he could hear Dumond running across the floor below. He surged downstairs but found that his target had disappeared. Hearing a heavy door slam shut to his right, Turrin spun in the direction of the noise and raced toward it.
Passing through a luxuriously appointed sitting room, the former undercover mobster found a heavy wooden door. He grabbed the knob and twisted, but the door wouldn’t budge. A dead bolt installed above the knob explained why the door was holding fast.
From the other side of the door, he could hear glass breaking. Muttering a curse, he holstered the Beretta, stepped back, unslung his shotgun and blasted through the shiny new lock. The dead bolt gave way in a shower of metal fragments and chunks of wood, and the door swung inward. The room in front of him was an office of some kind, outfitted with a desk, book shelves and filing cabinets.
Beyond the desk, Turrin saw the window had been broken out. The growl of a helicopter’s engines and the thrumming of its blades grew louder.
Turrin sprinted to the window and peered outside. A helicopter hovered overhead, the rotor wash causing tree branches and leaves to whip around as though caught in a monsoon. A rope ladder swung from the bottom of the aircraft. His eyes followed the length of the ladder. At the top, he saw Dumond, just a couple of feet from climbing into the craft.
Turrin aimed at the fleeing man. Before he could fire off a shot, though, two of Dumond’s ground thugs began unloading their automatic weapons at Turrin.
The sudden hail of bullets forced him to dive away from the window and land on the floor on his belly. Turrin rose, slinging the shotgun and unleathering his Beretta. He flattened against the wall and eased back to the window. Bullets speared through the opening, chewing holes in the large desk, shattering a set of crystal liquor bottles and glasses that stood on top of the desk, and ripping pockmarks in the walls.
Turrin remained just to the side of the window until the shooting subsided before he took a chance to peer around the frame. Dumond had disappeared inside the helicopter. One of the guards had slung his machine pistol over his shoulder and was climbing the rope up to the helicopter.
The other shooter, who was reloading his machine pistol, spotted Turrin in the window. The thug’s mouth dropped open. If he said anything, the noise was swallowed up by the helicopter. A burst from Turrin’s Beretta hit the man in the chest and knocked him to the ground.
The whine of the helicopter’s engines intensified, telling Turrin it was about to grab some altitude. He swung the Beretta, aimed at the aircraft and drew a bead on the second hardman on the ladder.
Before he could squeeze off a shot, though, the ladder came loose from its moorings and fell away from the helicopter. The man holding on to the ladder uttered a short cry before his body slapped hard against the ground.
Turrin climbed through the window. He ran a few yards before he stopped, raised the Beretta and tried to line up a shot at Dumond who was visible in the door of the retreating helicopter for a brief instant. Then he withdrew into the craft and slammed the door closed. Turrin let the pistol fall. There was no reason for him to waste another shot.
* * *
THE ELEVATOR CARRIED Bolan to the cellar. When the doors slid open, he stood to one side, holding the MP-5 in his right hand by its pistol grip. With his other hand, he kept a finger pressed into the Open Door button.
Light from the elevator spilled into the darkened hallway, illuminating several yards. Bolan saw shadows moving in the darkness.
The soldier took a flash-bang grenade from the pocket of his windbreaker, jerked out the pin and tossed the bomb through the doorway. He covered his ears as best he could, with one hand holding his pistol, and opened his mouth slightly. The grenade unleashed a white flash of light and a disorienting peal of thunder. The soldier went around the doorway in a crouch. One of Dumond’s hardmen had been knocked to the ground by the device’s concussive force. The other man was aiming his submachine gun at an angle, well past Bolan.
The Executioner swept the MP-5 in a wide horizontal arc as the weapon churned through the contents of its magazine. When he let off the trigger, the hardmen were sprawled on the floor in their own blood.
The soldier reloaded as he moved along the hallway. All the doors were locked. The soldier rolled one of the guards onto his back and searched through the pockets of the guy’s expensive suit. When he came away empty, he searched the second man and found a set of keys.
Bolan knocked once on the nearest door.
“Jennifer Rodriguez, are you in there? My name’s Matt Cooper. I’m from the Justice Department. I’m here to get you out.”
“Yes, I’m here,” the FBI agent replied.
The soldier tried a few keys and finally one unlocked the door. He pushed it inward.
Rodriguez had stepped back from the door and stood in the center of the room, staring at Bolan. The soldier was struck by her height first. Even at a distance, he could tell she was just under six feet tall and she still had a trim, athletic build. Her eyes were dark brown and Bolan could see the distrust beaming from them. After what she’d been through the past several days, he could hardly blame her.
She looked over Bolan’s shoulder. “Where’s the rest of the team?”
