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Something about the tall man, when he turned to glare at Kostka on the sidewalk, had persuaded Kostka in a heartbeat that they would be wise to let him think he had escaped, then run him down and kill him while his back was turned, and either retrieve their prisoner or eliminate him at the same time. That would leave important questions still unanswered, but Kostka thought that was preferable to the American’s escape.
No one could blame him for the breakout. That would fall on Emil Reisz—who, if he had an ounce of luck at all, was lying dead at the gymnasium with his two stooges. Kostka had been early to relieve Reisz, and for that reason alone had caught the prisoner and his still-unknown benefactor at the scene. Five minutes later, and they would have gotten clean away.
Still, if he lost them, there would be no one else Kostka could blame. They were in hot pursuit, well armed, but if they could not salvage the debacle he would be the loser. Might wish he was dead himself when time came to deliver the bad news.
Just make it right, he thought, and hissed at Durych with a fresh demand for speed.
“We’re gaining,” Durych snapped. “Be ready!”
In the backseat, Kostka heard his other soldiers—Michal Lobkovic and Zden
k Vojan—cocking pistols. They were both fair shots, but Kostka didn’t like the thought of either firing past him from the rear while they were racing through the streets. Half turning in his seat, he said, “Be careful if there’s shooting. I don’t want a goddamned bullet in my ear from one of you!”
Vojan grinned back at him and said, “I never shot a man by accident.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Kostka answered, turning back to watch the Volvo as it swung around another corner, vanishing from sight.
“Will you—”
“I know,” Durych said, interrupting him. “Speed up! Get closer! Work a miracle!”
“I need a driver, not a priest!” said Kosta.
“Hold on!” Durych warned as they reached the corner, rounding it in a skid that was barely controlled.
Cursing came from the backseat as momentum threw Vojan and Lobkovic together for a second, banging shoulders. Kostka powered down his window, sight wind whipping at his face and ruffling his short hair as he thrust his shooting arm outside the car. Another half block closer, and he could attempt a shot. One of the rear tires, or perhaps the driver, if he got a lucky break.
Where was the passenger? Kostka saw nothing of him, guessed that he was probably slumped over, maybe rolling in the backseat. Either way, it helped to have him clear of any shot that Kostka tried to make. Retrieving him alive would be a bonus; catching both runners alive would be sweet icing on the cake.
But he would settle for a pair of corpses if it was the only way to stop them.
Dead men couldn’t answer questions, but neither could they squeal to the police.
ANOTHER BLOCK, and Bolan heard a heavy, restless shifting in the seat behind him. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw Andrew Murton’s head block out the glare of headlights from the chase car.
“Better stay down,” he advised his passenger. “They could start shooting anytime.”
“Ah wanna hep.”
“You want to help?” Bolan said. “Lie back down so I can use the mirror.”
“Gimme guh.”
Not likely, Bolan thought. The last thing that he needed was a punch-drunk shooter blasting out the Volvo’s windows, peppering the houses that lined both sides of the street.
“I say again—”
He saw the muzzle-flash before his lips could form the order, jigged the steering wheel and knew they’d literally dodged a bullet in the night.
“Get down!” Bolan barked, relieved to see the shadow figure in his mirror disappear. Bolan knew Murton had endured an ordeal that would break a lesser man, but that would not prevent him from knocking Murton cold if it became a matter of survival.
One more muzzle-flash from the pursuit car, just as Bolan swerved into a side street on his left. Again, the shot went wild, buzzing away to who knew where. With any luck, the slug would strike a tree trunk or an empty vehicle. The flip side was a bedroom wall or window pierced, a sleeper shocked awake by sudden agony—or never waking up at all.
The hunters didn’t give a damn about potential bystanders. They had a job to do and they were focused on it to the exclusion of all else. Professionals. Nothing but victory or death would stop them.
Bolan was determined that they would not win.
Which left one option.
First, he had to find a killing ground that minimized the prospects of collateral damage. There, if he could locate such a place before a bullet found one of the Volvo’s tires, its fuel tank or its engine block, he’d make a stand and see what came of it.
Back to the map he’d memorized from the internet. Off to the east, three-quarters of a mile or so, the Vltava River surged against its banks, the waterfront including warehouses for cargo shipped by barge from Germany and Austria. Deliveries might be ongoing at this hour, but the traffic should be relatively light, and there would be no tourists loitering around the docks to serve as targets in a shooting gallery.
The chase car lost a little ground to Bolan on the turn but soon began to make it up again. He gave the driver credit, wishing at the same time that he’d blow a gasket, have a heart attack, whatever might truncate the chase without a battle to attract police.
Too late, he thought.
Some neighborhoods of Prague might tolerate a shot or two around midnight, but Kunratice did not strike him as one of those. If someone—make that several someones—hadn’t called the cops already, Bolan would be very much surprised. That thought turned up the ticktock volume of the numbers falling in his mind, but Bolan dialed it back again and focused on his half-formed plan.
If he could—
Hold on, what was this? Another pair of headlights coming up behind the chase car, not dawdling like a local coming home after a night out on the town. He couldn’t call it a pursuit, at least not yet. There were no flashing lights, no siren to suggest an officer behind the wheel.
A second chase car? Reinforcements summoned via cell phone or some other means to help the first team close their trap? If that were true, there might be anywhere from two to five or six guns in the second vehicle. The odds against survival may have doubled.
And what difference did it make?
Bolan had never been a quitter, knew the meaning of surrender but had never practiced it. Eight guns—or even ten—made life more difficult, definitely. But he had beaten worse odds in the past and walked away from the situation. The bottom line: even if death was certain for himself and his companion, he would fight until his last round had been fired, then take it hand to hand. Unless they dropped him with a lucky shot, the hunting party’s scarred survivors would not soon forget their meeting with The Executioner.
He might even return to haunt them in their dreams.
“WE HAVE A TAIL,” Durych announced to no one in particular.
Kostka spun in his seat so quickly that he strained his neck and almost yelped at the onslaught of sudden, piercing pain. He saw headlights behind them, clearly following the Citroën.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“Do prdele! How should I know?” Durych answered sharply.
“Not the policajti,” Vojan offered. “They’d have lit their Christmas tree by now.”
“Friends of the one we’re chasing, maybe,” Lobkovic suggested, sounding worried.
“Only joining in just now?” Kostka replied, half speaking to himself. “Where have they been?”
“Who cares?” Vojan retorted. “Do you want me to get rid of them?”
“Not yet. The one we want’s still in the car ahead. But watch them and be ready if they try to overtake us.”
Kostka wondered if he ought to call for help, but how would he explain the situation? Truth be told, he couldn’t say exactly where they were, so asking for a backup team would be superfluous. He wished they’d come prepared with more than pistols—automatic rifles, maybe shotguns—but it didn’t help.
What was the old saying? “Bez pen
z do hospody nelez.”
Without money do not go to the pub.
Translation: Be prepared. You have to pay to play.
And who thought up this stuff? Likely someone who’d bitten off more than he could chew but lived to tell about it afterward.
Kostka could only hope he’d have the same good luck. One thing was certain, though. If he broke off the chase from fear of being trapped, his end was certain. When he took the story back to Lida Werich he would find no mercy waiting for him. Failure was not tolerated. It would certainly not be tolerated, much less favored with an amnesty.
And if survival was not one of Kostka’s options, he would choose the quick death of a bullet over anything that Werich might devise to punish him. No contest there. Be sure to save a bullet for himself, in case it all went wrong.
“They’re heading for the river,” Durych said.
“The river? Why?”
“I’m not a zasranej mind reader, am I?”
Kostka nearly pistol-whipped him then, but that would be the same as suicide, the speed at which they were traveling. Instead, he satisfied himself with muttered curses, leaning from his open window to attempt another shot.
And missed, of course. Just as he squeezed the CZ’s trigger, his intended target made another sharp turn, this one to the right, and Kostka’s bullet screamed away downrange to find some unknown point of impact in the night. As Durych made the turn, Kostka could see the waterfront ahead of them. He smelled the river, with its scent of dead fish, diesel fuel and dreams vanished downstream.
“Maybe he has a boat,” Durych said.
“Then we have to stop him now,” Kostka replied, “before he gets aboard and goes somewhere that we can’t follow.”
“Jo, jo. I’m working on it!”
“So, work harder!”
“Seru na tvojí matku!” Durych snapped, but stood on the accelerator, somehow wringing more speed from the growling Citroën. “Unless that crate can fly, we have them now!”
WITH SOMETHING LIKE a hundred yards of pavement left before he hit the water, Bolan made his move. It wasn’t complex, but it still required precision timing, with coordination of the Volvo’s brake and its accelerator. If he did it properly, the car would make a sharp one-eighty, wind up facing back in the direction they’d just come from, stopping with its high beams aimed into the chase-car driver’s face. And if he blew it, they’d go tumbling ass-over-teakettle down the dock, hammered unconscious—maybe dead—before they plunged into the water.
One chance. But that was all a soldier could expect.
“Hang on!” he warned his backseat rider, hoping Murton had the sense and strength to brace himself. A wrong move, and it wouldn’t matter if he picked up any more new bruises.
But it worked. The Volvo nosed down, slowing sharply, and began to fishtail just as Bolan cranked the steering wheel hard left and stamped on the accelerator. By the time it came to rest again, four heartbeats later, he was facing toward the chase car with the ALFA in his left hand, out the open driver’s window, while his right hand gripped the wheel. Behind him, Murton mumbled something like a curse, and Bolan let it pass.
He watched the two cars bearing down upon him, closing fast. The first, with four opponents the big American had already seen, was in his sights. The second, still an unknown quantity, was bringing up the rear, joining the play for reasons Bolan hadn’t grasped yet. Nine rounds in the ALFA, and he could reload in seconds flat if he was free and clear. Driving at speed would complicate the process, but—
Bolan attacked, gunning the Volvo forward on a clear collision course and rapid-firing with the ALFA autoloader. Three, four, five rounds through the chase car’s windshield as the gap between them narrowed. Then his enemy was swerving off to Bolan’s left, plowing into a trailer clearly built for catering, its drab facade showing a poor painted rendition of a sausage on a bun.
That left one car in line, and Bolan wouldn’t fire on it until he had at least a rough fix on its occupants. The Volvo’s high beams only showed him one man in the vehicle, but what did that prove? Bolan had no friends in Prague—this might be a cop off duty, maybe working undercover, or a journalist who stumbled on the chase by sheer coincidence. Maybe a stupid rubbernecker with more curiosity than common sense. Shooting him first and asking questions later did not mesh with Bolan’s modus operandi.
So he brought the Volvo to another squealing hault, leaped out, keeping his car between himself and the third vehicle, finally recognizable as an Audi A4 sedan. It braked in turn, the driver stepping out with no one else behind him. Watching Bolan carefully, the last arrival circled his own car, approached the Citroën and peered inside. He pulled a flashlight from a pocket of his windbreaker and played its beam around inside the car.
Blood on the dash and windshield. Huddled, vaguely human shapes.
He straightened, said something in Czech. Stood waiting for an answer until Bolan told him, “Sorry. Failure to communicate.”
“American?” the stranger asked, his English sharply accented. When Bolan offered no reply, he said, “You’ve killed the driver, and it looks as though his friend up front may have a broken neck. These two,” he went on, waving vaguely toward the backseat, “could wake up at any time.”
Bolan still couldn’t read the stranger, so he asked, “You want me to take care of that?”
“It’s better if we leave them as they are, I think. They’ll have a devil of a time explaining this. It ought to be amusing.”
Bolan watched the stranger moving toward him, held his ALFA lowered but prepared for instant action. “This is your idea of humor?” he inquired.
The Audi’s driver shrugged. “Not normally, but I have learned to find amusement where I can,” he said. “One never knows when life may suddenly present a spectacle.”
“And you just happen to be there,” Bolan said.
“Ah. It was not a coincidence. I think you understand this, eh?”
“It’s sinking in,” Bolan replied.
The stranger’s draw was smooth and fast, his pistol aimed at Bolan’s forehead even as the ALFA centered on his chest.
“And now, what you would call the punch line, I believe,” he said. “You are under arrest.”
3
Baltimore, Maryland
Two days earlier
The sixth victim, another working girl, had been discovered floating in the Chesapeake off Locust Point, near Fort Henry. As with the five preceding kills, her throat was slashed back to the spine, a case of near decapitation after a savage beating and a list of signature indignities well recognized by homicide investigators. FBI agents were working on the case, inspiring all the usual resentment from embarrassed local cops. The newspapers and smiling TV anchors babbled on about a “Ripper” in their midst, a stalker who had psych profilers baffled.
The truth, as usual, was rather different.
At Baltimore P.D., they knew that all six victims were employed—read owned—by Luscious Luther Johnson. Thirty-six years old, imprisoned twice for pandering and living off the proceeds of prostitution, Johnson was an aging dog who’d never managed to learn any new tricks on the street or in the joint. He liked controlling women, playing God in lives blighted by sexual abuse and drugs. He liked the money, too, of course, but that was secondary to the kick he got from reigning over female serfs.
Before his second prison term, Luther had disciplined unruly girls with belt lashings, a wire coat hanger sometimes, but nothing permanent. Something had changed inside him while he served his time at Roxbury Correctional, perhaps a hardening of attitude precipitated by the fact that two of Luther’s “bitches” had been brave enough to testify against him at his trial. One of them left the state thereafter, while the other kept working the streets around Patterson Park as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Big mistake.
Divine Jones had been first in the series, succeeded by others who balked at the offer to join Johnson’s stable or held back too much of the cash they’d received from their johns. No disrespect of any sort was tolerated.
Police had questioned Luther at least a dozen times so far. But knowing he was probably involved and proving it were very different things. A team from Vice had worked on putting Johnson back in stir for pimping, using Maryland’s three-strikes law to send him up for life, but Luscious Luther wasn’t quite as careless as he’d been in the past. He kept no records of illicit business, paid his taxes on a chain of coin-op laundries and had generally kept his nose clean in the public eye.
Bolan had been passing through “Charm City”—also known to some as “Mobtown”—with no plans to hang around beyond a night’s rest at a local Motel 6, when he heard about the case on CNN. He’d made a couple calls, stayed over for an extra night of observation on the scene and saw a chance to do some good.
Like any other pimp who has a thriving urban racket, Johnson paid his dues. He tithed religiously to the Peruzzi family, which Bolan thought might rate a visit at some future date, along with bagmen from the Baltimore P.D. and City Hall. None would protect him if the Feds collected evidence to try him as a six-time psycho killer, but until that evidence appeared Johnson was golden.
