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He hugged the nearest wall, aware that it could offer little in the way of physical protection from a bullet, but concealment had to count for something. Moving in an awkward crouch, Bolan held his carbine in the low-ready position with its butt against his shoulder and its muzzle canted toward the floor at a forty-five-degree angle. The hold facilitated forward motion and allowed “big picture” scanning of the target zone, without sacrificing any significant first-shot speed.
Six feet from the corner, he paused, listening. It didn’t help much, with the shouts and sounds of running feet that echoed through the house from every side, but Bolan didn’t plan to blindly rush around the corner and be gutted by a buckshot charge.
So much to think about.
Besides the unknown number of assailants still inside the house, he had the captive women and their prospective buyers on his mind. Meanwhile, somewhere in the ritzy neighborhood, someone was probably alerting the police to sounds of gunfire from the Cako spread.
East Keansburg had no law enforcement of its own, relying on the county sheriff’s office for protection in a pinch. The internet told Bolan that their 9-1-1 commo center was in Freehold, the county seat, ten miles to the south. That didn’t mean the nearest cruiser would be starting out from headquarters, but it would take some time to organize a SWAT team after first-responders reached the scene and called for backup.
Every second counted, even so.
With that in mind, he made his move. Stepping off from the wall he’d been hugging, Bolan aimed his M-4 carbine at the corner, picked a spot where someone might be crouching if he had an ambush on his mind and fired off half a dozen probing rounds.
It wouldn’t be precision work, by any means, but 5.56 mm rounds were made to penetrate three millimeters of steel at six hundred yards, or twelve millimeters at a hundred yards. Drywall or lath and plaster was merely tissue paper to a bullet traveling more than twice the speed of sound.
A strangled cry rewarded Bolan’s searching fire. He followed it around the corner, found his adversary stretched out on one side and dying with a fresh wound in his chest to match the first one in his shoulder. Bolan kicked the shotgun out of reach and stripped a pistol from the gunman’s belt, dropping the magazine before he pitched it back the way he’d come.
Keep moving. Find the women. Find Lorik Cako.
Simple intentions, but they weren’t so easy in a labyrinthine madhouse with an enemy of unknown numbers now on full alert.
As if in answer to his thought, Bolan heard footsteps slamming down a nearby staircase, soldiers hissing back and forth to one another in Albanian. He’d memorized a photo of the scum who owned the mansion, but that pockmarked face had thus far managed to elude him. Meanwhile, any other male he spotted on the premises was fair game until proved innocent, and Bolan wasn’t in the mood to check IDs.
It sounded like an army coming down the stairs, maybe another on the second floor, and the Executioner still had to reach the women he presumed were quartered in the basement. All the while he had to somehow manage to stay alive and dodge any police who might arrive before he finished up.
A piece of cake.
Bolan angled toward the stairs, letting the carbine lead him, squeezing off a burst when only feet were visible and hearing angry cries in answer. One man tumbled into his field of fire and jerked helplessly as Bolan’s next burst found him, opening his chest.
The M-4’s magazine had to be running low. The soldier ducked into an open doorway, seeking cover while he switched it out, releasing the mag with two rounds left inside and swapping it for a full one. He was about to feed the hungry carbine when a wheezing figure rushed at Bolan from his blind side, strangling hands outstretched.
Bolan reacted without thinking. He slammed the carbine’s butt into his attacker’s ribs and dropped the magazine, drawing his trench knife as he turned. He swung the weapon butt-first, cracking his opponent’s forehead with the short spike on its pommel, smashed his teeth in with the knuckleduster built into the grip, then drove the six-inch blade between the stunned Albanian’s ribs.
One twist, and it was done.
He sheathed the knife, scooped up his fallen magazine and checked it, seated it into the carbine’s receiver and got himself back in the game.
PANIC WAS WEAKNESS, and in many situations it was fatal. Lorik Cako didn’t plan to die this evening, but he had a great deal more to think about than simply getting out alive without a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
His customers, for one thing, and the women who were living, breathing evidence against him, capable of sending him to prison for a hundred years simply because of their existence in this time and place.
Above all else, he had to think of Arben Kurti and the men behind him, what they’d do to Cako if he failed them, or if they suspected that he might cooperate with the police to save himself from jail. On balance, Cako realized that he’d be better off exactly where he was, shot dead, than carried to some slaughterhouse where Kurti could interrogate him and dissect him over time.
Regis Bushati met him as Cako reached the ground floor, with sounds of automatic gunfire echoing around them.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Cako demanded.
“Intruders!” Bushati replied.
“How many?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, find out, for Christ’s sake! And call out the cars. Have them come to the back door at once.”
“Yes, sir!” Bushati responded.
While Bushati ran off to obey his instructions, Cako hesitated in the corridor, smelling gunsmoke. His first instinct told him to go and meet his enemies, destroy them all, but he also had to think about his customers downstairs. If they were killed or injured in his care, there would be hell to pay from their respective syndicates.
Not only in New Jersey, but beyond.
That thought made Cako wish that he could flee the house and simply keep on running. But where could he go? Where in the world would he be safe, once Arben Kurti and Rahim Berisha started hunting him?
Nowhere.
Turning back to the stairwell behind him, he retraced his steps, descending once more to the basement. Qemal Hoxha met him, looking anxious, holding one of the AKM rifles.
“They want to get out of here, Lorik,” he said.
“Can you blame them?”
Cako returned to the theater, where the first nearly naked woman still stood under spotlights, her eyes glazed from the drugs she’d been given to keep her in line. She reminded him of an animal caught in a car’s charging headlights, paralyzed with fear.
The buyers started shouting at him all at once. Despite their babel, Cako got the gist of it. They wanted explanations for the noise upstairs—and more important, as Hoxha had already said, they wanted out.
“Gentlemen, please! I can’t respond if all of you are shouting!”
Cako gave them two full seconds to quiet down, then took a backward step and raised his shotgun, squeezing off a blast into the basement’s ceiling. Shattered fragments of acoustic tiles rained down over his guests as they flinched from the weapon’s roar.
And shut their mouths in unison.
“As I was saying, cars are being brought around to take you safely out of here. You’ll be protected on the way, and I sincerely hope you will accept my personal apology for the disruption. At a later time, the merchandise will be available for bidding at substantial discounts, as my compensation for the inconvenience. Now—”
“What is happening?” one of the Japanese demanded, cutting Cako off.
“It seems there are intruders on the property,” Cako replied. “I’m taking steps to deal with them, but in the meantime it is best for you to leave, before police arrive.”
That got them moving when the gunfire might have kept them rooted where they stood. When Cako turned to lead them up the stairs, they crowded on his heels, jostling one another for position in the line. Bringing up the rear, came Qemal Hoxha to cover their escape.
IN RETROSPECT, Bolan couldn’t have said exactly when he felt the tide turning against him. He’d been headed for the mansion’s basement, accessed through a kind of study where the books lining three walls appeared untouched except for weekly dusting, but had found the stairs too late. The place was empty, though a smell of sweat and perfume told him that it had been occupied quite recently.
He had a look in the control room, saw the empty gun rack on one wall and double-timed to check backstage. There was a kind of dressing room—perhaps undressing room was more appropriate—with scraps of lingerie strewed here and there on furniture that didn’t match the pricey tone out front, and stronger perfume in the air.
Baiting the hook.
An elevator served the dressing area, its small car built to carry four passengers, tops. Call it seven trips for twenty young women, if someone rode the elevator up and down with them.
Bolan admitted to himself that there’d been time to clear them out since his first gunshots, but would Cako send them back upstairs into a firefight? Never mind humanity. It sounded like a risk of valuable merchandise, and any living witness could be used against him if she fell into the hands of medics, cops and prosecutors.
Since they hadn’t been exterminated in the dressing room, it followed, then, that Cako had removed them from the premises. Or he was trying to. They might be going with the buyers, in the fragile hope that he could still log sales despite the interruption of his little show.
No time to waste.
Bolan was turning toward the stairs once more when he heard shooters coming down to join him. He couldn’t guess their number or determine how well they were armed, but once he dropped the first of them the rest could hold the stairs forever with a single gun, keep Bolan bottled up below until they either smoked him out or the police showed up to make things infinitely worse.
Long years ago, Bolan had vowed that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Occasionally he had broken that rule when faced with an extremely brutal, or murderous law enforcement officer. He regarded everyone who wore a badge as soldiers of the same side in his war against the predators. He would help honest cops arrest their dirty comrades, but would never kill an everyday officer to save himself.
If the cops found him here, with no means of escape, he’d surrender. Face trial yet again, with no help from Brognola or anyone else at the Farm. And beyond that?
The end.
He fired a short burst toward the stairs, discouraging the enemy advance, then looked around his prison. He could take the elevator up a floor or two, but if the shooters knew he was downstairs, they would cover all the stops, automatic weapons poised to smother him with fire before the door was fully open.
What, then?
If Cako’s buyers and their merchandise had left the house without going upstairs, there had to be another exit somewhere in the basement. Something Bolan could discover, given enough time.
But time was one thing that he didn’t have to spare.
“Start looking, then,” he muttered to himself.
It had to be right there. Somewhere.
With grim determination, Bolan started searching for a way to save his life.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, Bolan found it. There was yet another staircase hidden at the southwest corner of the house, disguised as storage space. The door was still ajar when he reached it, peered inside and saw steep stairs ascending to ground level. When nobody shot his head off, the soldier forged ahead, mounting the stairs and wondering where he’d wind up.
Fresh air washed over Bolan as he cleared a ground-floor doorway, hesitating long enough to verify that no gunmen were waiting for him to emerge. Maybe the housemen didn’t know about the stairs. Maybe they’d just forgotten.
When the Executioner emerged, a minicaravan of limousines was rolling off along the driveway that would take them out through Cako’s wrought-iron gates and off to anywhere they pleased.
Unless he stopped them first.
Bolan triggered a short burst toward the final car in line and saw his bullets spark off armored steel. He guessed the limos would have run-flat tires, as well, but even if they didn’t he was bent on stopping all of them, not just the train’s caboose.
Which meant he needed wheels.
Some fifty yards away he saw a seven-car garage standing with doors wide-open, as if all those shiny toys inside were left on permanent display. As for ignition keys, he’d have to work that out.
But first…
Below him, Bolan heard his trackers penetrate the basement, shouting, firing, drawing closer by the heartbeat, closing on the staircase that they couldn’t miss.
Scowling at the retreating limos, Bolan primed another frag grenade and waited until he heard footsteps on the stairs below him, then released the spoon and counted off four seconds. He dropped the lethal egg with only two seconds remaining on its fuse, and ran like hell.
He barely registered the blast, was focused solely on the long garage and cars inside it. On arrival, Bolan spied a small space off to one side where a wall rack held assorted automotive tools.
And keys.
He snagged one for a Rolls-Royce Phantom, dropped into a driver’s seat that felt more like an easy chair and gunned the 6.5-liter V12 engine into snarling life. After releasing the parking brake, the soldier stood on the accelerator and roared out of the garage.
He was in time to see a line of gunmen spilling from the exit he had used, a couple of them looking wobbly on their feet. Bolan had no time to examine them for wounds, determined as he was to catch the limo caravan, but they saw him and moved to intercept the Phantom as he powered out along the driveway.
Was the Rolls-Royce armored against small-arms fire?
He’d find out any second now.
They opened up at thirty yards with two Kalashnikovs, an Uzi and another SMG resembling an old Smith & Wesson M-76. It sounded as if Bolan was driving into one hell of a hailstorm, bullets scarring glass and gouging divots in the Phantom’s paint job, but they didn’t make it through to nail the driver in his comfy padded seat.
He could’ve saved himself some time by driving past the firing squad and simply leaving them behind, but they were running out to meet him now, still firing as they came.
A quick twist of the padded steering wheel and he was in among them, startled faces gaping at him in the high-beam glare of headlights. One was quick enough to dodge and throw himself aside, but Bolan took the other three.
A glancing blow for Mr. Uzi, maybe a broken hip of shattered ribs to pain him for the next few decades when it rained. His two companions took the full brunt of the hurtling Rolls. One rolled up on the hood, squealing, and smeared the windshield with blood where his face collided with the glass, before he slipped away to starboard and was gone. The other fell beneath the car, tires thumping over flesh and bone, five thousand pounds and change turning the shooter to a screaming pancake on the pavement.
Then he was off in hot pursuit of Cako’s limo train, the Phantom gathering momentum as he kept its pedal to the metal—or, to be precise, it’s stylish carpeting. Bolan could see the first black limousine already passing through the open gate, taking off. Number two was close behind it, with the others lining up to take their turns.
Bolan saw a bright spark in the rearview mirror, then a trail of fire was chasing him along the driveway, gaining fast. Before he had a chance to twist the steering wheel, the RPG projectile struck the Phantom’s left-rear fender and exploded, slamming the Rolls-Royce off course while delivering a solid kick to its tail.
Bolan hung on, feeling the tire go flat at the back, and kept the pedal down, grinding along the driveway, trailing smoke and sparks behind him.
HOW LONG BEFORE THE gas tank detonated, if it did at all? Bolan knew he was pushing it, stretching his luck to the consistency of tissue paper, but he had to reach the gate before it closed. Even if he was forced to let the limos slip away, he still had to escape from Cako’s walled estate, live on to fight another day.
He almost made it.
From a distance, the Executioner could see the rolling gate begin to close behind the final limousine. It wasn’t fast, but didn’t need to move like lightning, with the Rolls still sixty yards or more away. With the Phantom’s left-rear bumper scraping blacktop, he couldn’t squeeze another mile per hour from the straining engine.
If he didn’t make it through the gate, what, then?
Stop short, perhaps, and climb atop the Rolls, then jump from there and roll over the gate. He’d be an easy target for the shooters coming up behind him, one of them presumably still carrying the RPG. It was small satisfaction to suppose that they’d be trapped inside when the police arrived.
What difference would it make to Bolan, if they killed him first?
The gate was slightly more than halfway shut when Bolan reached it, rumbling across his path from right to left. He swerved to aim directly for the closing gap, uncertain if the Phantom’s six-foot-six-inch width would clear.
Almost.
He scraped the stone and concrete gatepost on the driver’s side, got roughly halfway through, and then the gate crunched up against the Phantom on his right. Cursing, he tried to power through, flayed paint from both sides with a high-pitched grinding sound that resonated through his teeth like talons on a chalkboard.
Stuck.
He couldn’t force his door to open, but he powered down the window, wriggled through with difficulty with his web gear, then leaned back inside to grab his M-4 carbine from the seat.
Barely in time.
Bullets were pinging off the Rolls and off the gate as Bolan pulled his weapon free and spun to face his enemies. He saw the RPG man lining up another shot and Bolan didn’t hesitate, slamming a burst into his target’s chest, then ducking as the guy pitched over backward, triggering the rocket. It cleared the gate by about six inches, hurtling off into the night.
And then the rest of them were firing, Bolan spraying them with 5.56 mm manglers as he dodged behind the gatepost. It was solid, but it wasn’t huge. His enemies could flank him easily, set up a cross fire that would root him out and cut him down.
