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  "Cooper!" Rieck called. "I've got a live one. No, two!"

  The Executioner went to stand next to Rieck, who held his weapon on two wounded men. One was recovering from a graze to the scalp that had knocked him sprawling. The other had a badly mangled leg and had also taken a round through one arm, which was hanging limply. Both men were now sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall to the left of the smoking doorway.

  "Either of them speak English?" Bolan asked.

  "This one does." Rieck nodded to the one with the head graze. "The other man does not."

  Bolan searched both men as Rieck stood guard. When he was satisfied that neither gunner had a hidden weapon and that there was nothing within reach that could be used against him, he squatted to put himself at eye level with the prisoners.

  "I have questions," Bolan said simply. "Will you answer them?"

  "Nein." The man shook his head, his hand pressed against the bloody groove in his scalp. He sounded pained and was probably working on a pretty good concussion.

  "Allow me to reiterate," Bolan said. He drew the Desert Eagle, made a show of thumbing the hammer back, and pressed the triangular snout of the massive handgun against the forehead of the other prisoner. "You will answer my questions or I will blow your friend's brains all over you, and then I will kill you" It was again a bluff; Bolan wasn't in the business of executing helpless prisoners. But he needed information, and he needed it as quickly as he could get it.

  The prisoner wavered. His eyes went to his comrade and then back to Bolan.

  "Look," Rieck said, "this isn't necessary. We're not interested in you. We're only after Iron Thunder, the very people you were fighting."

  Bolan looked at him. That was not strictly true, but if it helped loosen the prisoner's tongue, it was fine with the soldier. To the prisoner, he said, "Are you willing to die for Dumar Eon? Is he worth it?"

  The prisoner shook his head slowly.

  "What's your name?" Rieck asked.

  "Niclas," the man replied sullenly.

  "Well, Niclas, that's a start," Bolan said. "Now, quickly. There's not much time. Iron Thunder was previously in possession of certain chemical weapons. They now appear not to be. Would you happen to know anything about that?"

  "No," Niclas said.

  "Niclas," Bolan said menacingly, "do not lie to me." He pressed the Desert Eagle more forcefully against the other prisoner's head. "If you don't care about your friend here, I can understand that. But when I'm done with him and you won't tell me anything, I won't have any reason not to shoot you, too."

  "All right, all right," Niclas said, swearing in German several times. "The Syrians, the Syrians. We are selling the weapons to the Syrians."

  "What Syrians would those be?" Bolan asked.

  "I don't know!" Niclas shook his head and then regretted the gesture. He groaned and pressed his fist more tightly against the furrow there. "Syrians, that is all I was told! The meet was today. It is probably already done."

  "Where was the meet?"

  "A parking garage," Niclas said. He rattled off an address.

  Bolan gestured with the pistol, sensing the man was holding back. "All right!" he said again. "The Syrians have been given use of one of our safehouses. They will stage the weapons there until they can be moved." He gave up the address.

  "What's their timetable?" Bolan pressed.

  "I don't know." Niclas groaned miserably. "We aren't told such things."

  "Confirm for me," Bolan said, "just who 'we' is."

  "Sicherheit Vereinigung," Niclas said. "I am security."

  "These other men? You're mercenaries, aren't you?"

  "Some of us," Niclas admitted.

  "And the reason you were shooting Iron Thunder members? You're all supposed to be on the same side."

  Niclas spit and then held his skull again. "Those madmen?" he said, incredulous. "We were never on their side. It was a pleasure finally to bring death to them, as they so often said they wished. Crazy, all of them! Sadists and madmen, claiming they valued only death. Long have we tolerated their interference and cleaned up after their ill-considered games."

  "Who do you answer to?" Bolan asked.

  Niclas looked at the floor. He was caught, and he knew it. Bolan imagined that, as he truly weighed his loyalties, he was finding little reason not to roll over on those who had sent him to do their dirty work.

  "My men and I take our orders from David Schucker," Niclas said finally. "He is head of..."

  "Operations for the Security Consortium," Rieck supplied. "I knew it."

  "Rieck," Bolan said, "get the authorities on the phone. This place is a war zone. It should be crawling with cops, government officials, military, something. Where is everybody?"

  "Bought off?" Rieck speculated.

  "Looks like," Bolan nodded. "Shake their tree. They can't ignore what's going on here forever. Get them out here. We need this crime scene controlled. I'll need you to keep an eye on things and run interference."

  "You're going to this safehouse?"

  "Yes," Bolan said. "I've got to move fast. We need to stop those chemicals before they leave the country, or else we'll never get our hands on them. You can handle these two?"

  "Yes, of course," Rieck said. "I will be fine. Cooper?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Try not to get shot. I've been enjoying our work together." He grinned through his split lip, and the bruises on his face made him wince.

  "Yeah, I can tell," Bolan said. "You look like you're having fun."

  14

  Half an hour later, Bolan parked the BMW between two smaller cars on a narrow side street. Under cover of night, he made sure his war bag was slung across his body and that his weapons were fully loaded. He dropped his drover coat on the backseat of the car. Rigged for battle, he walked down the block and circled the safehouse address.

  It was a small, historic building squeezed between two larger edifices, in a mixed neighborhood that appeared partly residential and partly commercial. Even in a city as busy as Berlin, at this hour the area was relatively quiet. Bolan crept along the row of buildings, moving silently, a wraith on a mission of justice.

  When he saw the figure walking the sidewalk in front of the target building, he knew the man for what he was: a sentry.

  Dressed in a leather bomber jacket, jeans and boots, the big man was doing a good job of trying to look casual. Bolan, concealed in the shadow of a neighboring building, watched him for a few minutes. He kept walking the same path back and forth in front of the safehouse. There was a streetlamp not far away, and Bolan marked the sentry's passage by the number of times he crossed the circle of light. Periodically the guard touched his jacket just forward of his left hip. That was the sign of a man carrying a gun who was nervous, agitated or simply uncomfortable. It was the act of a man reassuring himself that the piece was there, that it hadn't shifted or fallen.

  Bolan watched for twenty minutes more, listening to the numbers fall in his head. When he was satisfied that the sentry was alone and not being watched by someone inside the safehouse, he made his move. He simply emerged from the shadows and walked casually down the street, heading toward him.

  The man started at Bolan's sudden appearance. The soldier, his eyes locked on the end of the street, passed right by the sentry, nodding cheerfully as both men occupied the circle of illumination. He paused as if suddenly remembering something, turned back and made a show of patting down his pockets.

  "Say," he said quietly, "you wouldn't have a cigarette, would you?"

  When the sentry stared at him, confused, Bolan asked again, more slowly. He pantomimed smoking a cigarette and again repeated his request, playing the Ugly American to the hilt.

  The sentry was suspicious but didn't dare draw attention to the safehouse by being rude. He produced a cigarette from a pack taken from his jacket pocket. He held this out to Bolan.

  The soldier reached with his left hand to take the cigarette — and grabbed the sentry by the wrist.
He pulled with all his might, yanking the man off balance and straight into Bolan's rock-hard right fist. Something in the sentry's face crunched. He opened his mouth to shout and Bolan hammered him again. The sentry went limp and dropped to the sidewalk.

  The Executioner held his breath. The neighborhood remained quiet, except for the low thrum of the city itself. Satisfied, Bolan dragged the man into the shadows of the alleyway between the buildings. The gun the man carried in a cross-draw holster was a 1911 -type .45. Bolan took it, unloaded it and stripped the slide away. He dumped the components and then secured the unconscious sentry with plastic zip-tie cuffs. Finally, he used duct tape from his war bag to gag and blindfold him.

  Moving quickly and silently, he crept to the front of the safehouse, walked up the stone steps and risked peering through one of the curtained windows facing the street. Lights burned inside. Satisfied, Bolan went back the way he came, stepped over the prone figure in the alley and went around to the rear. He found a heavy wooden door and another window. The window was shuttered, but he could tell that here, too, lights were on inside. Moving up to the door, he put his ear to the wood. The voices inside were speaking in Arabic, which he recognized easily.

  Another, louder voice suddenly spoke up. The Arabic conversation ceased. This new voice was in accented English, and had the tone of a man speaking on a phone over a bad connection.

  "It is Assan," the voice said. "Assan Bashir!" There was cursing in Arabic. "Can you hear me or can you not? What? Wait... Yes, that is better. Yes. I said, it is Assan. I want you to pass on word to my father. Yes! What?... Then get a pen and write it down, you fool! Do as I tell you." As Bashir waited impatiently — at least, Bolan pictured him doing so — he paced back and forth. Bolan watched the shadows play across the curtained window.

  "What?" Bashir responded again. "Yes, the scrambler is in place. Yes. Do not worry! All is ready. The cargo is here, with me. I am arranging for its transport. Tell father I will have it shipped and be on the same plane back. Yes. Tomorrow morning. Yes. Yes, I said! Very well." The loud sigh of exasperation was audible even through the door. Bashir began hissing rapidly in Arabic, uttering what Bolan could only assume was profanity. The man's tone changed as he raised his voice; now it was that of a man in charge addressing subordinates. He was, Bolan thought, probably verifying the plans to ship the "cargo"...what could only be the chemical weapons — in the morning.

  Of course, he could simply be ordering dinner, too, but the implications of the phone call remained. Some means of transportation Bashir had arranged would be waiting, most likely to take the weapons to Syria. While Bashir himself wouldn't be making the rendezvous, Bolan would have to recount his phone call to the Farm. Whatever power play the Bashir family was contemplating, something involving nerve gas and other chemical weapons would be of interest to Stony Man's data analysts. It was just the sort of advance tip that might prompt another mission to head off the problem.

  There was, Bolan thought, a time and a place for such business. For now, he had more immediate work to do.

  With the suppressed Beretta 93-R in hand, the Executioner stepped to the side of the door. He tapped on it faintly, then he tapped again. An angry voice from inside spoke in Arabic. When Bolan tapped a third time, he heard the door latch being pulled back. The angry face that appeared as the door was thrown open froze in shock as the barrel of the Beretta came up.

  Bolan put a finger to his lips. "Shh," he said.

  The man shouted in Arabic and grabbed for the gun in his shoulder holster.

  The Executioner shot him.

  Bolan put a single round between the man's eyes. The body fell to the kitchen floor. This room in the back of the safehouse was dominated by a round kitchen table, a bright ceiling lamp and a dusty metal stove that looked to be an antique. Bolan was already turning to engage his second target as he took in these details. Like the first armed man, this second gunman wore a business suit. He was going for an Uzi that sat on the kitchen table. Bolan drilled him through the neck with a single 9 mm round, then flipped the Beretta 93-R to 3-round burst.

  Never one to waste a tactic that worked, Bolan fished a flash-bang grenade from his war bag, pulled the pin and counted down as the spoon spun away. He threw the grenade against the wall next to the open doorway leading from the kitchen. The flash-bang bounced and ricocheted into the next room. The soldier covered his ears, closed his eyes tightly and opened his mouth. The deafening blast was painfully bright even through his eyelids.

  The men in the next room were screaming. Bolan crouched and glided through the doorway, both hands clutching the Beretta. He took careful aim and drilled each writhing gunman through the head or chest.

  As quickly as the firefight had started, it was over. The sudden silence roared in the Executioner's ears.

  Gun up and probing, he surveyed the bodies arrayed before him. Any of them could be Bashir, but he didn't think so. They were dressed relatively plainly and, more importantly, almost identically. Some were wearing jackets and some were not, but they were like cookie-cutter copies of each other; these men would be Bashir's security detail.

  The ceiling above him creaked, just once.

  That answered that. Bashir and possibly more men would be waiting upstairs for their attacker to come calling. The soldier could expect to walk into a bullet, or many of them, as soon as he reached the landing at the top of the stairs. He waited.

  It was a gamble, of course; there was a chance the police would show up in response to the disturbance, unless the Consortium had somehow paid for discretion in relation to what went on at their safehouse. Bolan was betting he wouldn't have to wait long for the enemy to appear.

  He stationed himself behind the doorway to the kitchen, where he had just enough view of the stairs leading to the second floor. Sure enough, in a few minutes a pair of shoes appeared. Bolan watched but made no move. Eventually the man on the stairs — another bodyguard, from the look of him — was fully visible, the heavy Magnum revolver in his hands held before him like a magic wand. He was a very large man, with almost no neck to speak of. His shoulders strained the suit he wore. He looked nervous, and for good reason. Several of his fellows had just been killed in an eyeblink.

  Bolan waited for the man to turn away, frantically looking in every direction at once. When the angle was best, the soldier said, "Don't move."

  The bodyguard swung the barrel of the revolver toward Bolan with a cry of alarm. The Executioner shot him. The 3-round burst took the man in the heart, but he was charging forward like an enraged rhino. Perhaps already dead on his feet, the bodyguard crashed into Bolan and took him to the floor, his fingers locked in a death grip around his throat. The Beretta was knocked from his grasp as he hit the floor with rib-cracking force, three hundred pounds of near deadweight on top of him.

  Bolan tried to push off the dying man. He could feel the Desert Eagle being clawed from its holster, but there was nothing he could do about it. His own hands were the only thing keeping the fingers around his throat from strangling the life out of him.

  Silently, the two men fought. Finally, the messages from his body caught up with the big bodyguard's brain. His fingers went limp and he slumped on top of the soldier, the death rattle low in his throat leaving no doubt of his passing. Bolan rolled the corpse off himself.

  And looked up into the barrel of a Browning Hi-Power.

  On instinct, Bolan slapped the gun away. It spun across the room, and the man before him — a squat, ugly man with gold rings on his fingers — smiled viciously.

  He yanked a kindjaî from his waistband. The curved, wickedly tapered dagger glittered in his hand. "You take my gun," he said, "and I simply stab you with my knife."

  "Bashir," Bolan said.

  Bolan's apparent recognition of the Syrian surprised him. It was enough of a distraction. The big American lashed out with a combat-booted foot, catching Bashir in the thigh, sending him reeling. The Executioner drew the double-edged Sting dagger from his wai
stband and held it low against his body, his free hand up and ready, the knife between him and his opponent.

  "I will kill you!" Bashir growled. "I will dance on your corpse. I will find your family and I will have them killed. I..." The Syrian launched his attack in midsentence, hoping to fool his opponent with the sudden move.

  Bolan was ready for it; he slipped back and slashed Bashir as he went past. The squat man shrieked and whirled, slashing at the air repeatedly, trying to drive Bolan away. The soldier waited, letting the Syrian waste his energy, biding time until a serious strike came.

  "You have no words, dog?" Bashir said. "Can you not understand me?" He switched to Arabic, and then to what was probably horribly accented and broken German. Bolan gave him nothing. Bashir, growing more and more agitated, charged again, this time with a clumsy overhead attack that became a much deadlier backhand thrust as the man stabbed at Bolan. The Executioner slapped and blocked, passing Bashir's knife hand, and thrust out with a brutal, pistoning side kick to Bashir's knee. The Syrian screamed as something gave and he collapsed onto the floor.

  Bolan kicked the knife away. Watching Bashir the entire time, he retrieved his guns, wiped clean and sheathed his knife, then stood over Bashir with the Desert Eagle drawn.

  "The nerve gas," Bolan said.

  "American!" Bashir said, confused. "But why? How?"

  "Does it matter?" Bolan said. "The nerve gas." He thumbed back the hammer of the weapon."

  "Upstairs," Bashir said, gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee. He was bleeding freely from the slash on his arm, but the wound wasn't that serious. "It is all upstairs."