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  "Dumar..." Schucker spit blood as he tried to speak.

  "Oh, yes," Eon said, looking perturbed. "I almost forgot about you, David. How rude of me." With Schucker pinned to the table, he struck the man over and over.

  David Schucker's last sight on earth was Dumar Eon's leather glove as the fist inside it pounded the life from him. As the darkness closed in, he had just enough time to wonder if perhaps the Iron Thunder cultists had been on to something, after all, and to ask himself if he was truly prepared for the oblivion that approached.

  And then he thought nothing more, ever.

  16

  "I told them you weren't hurt that badly," Bolan said from the doorway of Rieck's hospital room.

  "You are all heart," Rieck said. He was sitting up in bed, watching television while going through some files that were spread on the blanket over his legs. He had a few stitches in his forehead. He wasn't wearing his shirt. His ribs had been taped up.

  "Did a number on you, didn't they?"

  "As you said it would, it got unpleasant." Rieck grinned. "But, Cooper, I have to say, working with you in the midst of this firestorm... I feel I've accomplished more genuine law-enforcement work in a couple of days than I have in the past two years."

  Bolan had nothing to say to that. He looked out the window. Rieck's room had a good view of the parking lot below, and not much else. "They spared no expense, I see," he said.

  "It's not bad," Rieck replied. "I wanted them to let me out last night, but they insisted on keeping me for observation. I had the office send over some of my files. I've been going through the old Iron Thunder data, cross-checking what we've learned since then."

  "You should learn to relax when you can," Bolan said. "You never know when you'll get a chance to rest again."

  "You sound like you speak from long experience."

  "Been there."

  There was a knock on the door. Bolan moved aside to allow an orderly to enter the room. He carried a bouquet of flowers in a small basket. With a nod, he left the flowers on the table in the room, where it joined two others.

  "What's all that?" Bolan asked.

  "Oh, that has been going on all morning," Rieck said. "The local papers have been reporting on the gun battles. As you might expect, it is one of the biggest stories this city has seen since, oh, I would say the Wall came down. It is not every night that war comes to the city so readily. Some of my friends within the police department were apparently too free with their accounts of the fighting, and my name came up. My superiors at Interpol, when reached for comment, have apparently seized on this opportunity for some positive public relations in the press. I am told I am to play the role of hero. I'm practically the star of my own spy novel, Cooper."

  "So the flowers are.?.." Bolan asked.

  "From admirers." Rieck chuckled. "Gifts from a grateful public, thanking me for my service to country and to law and order. Apparently at least one news story explained that 'valiant investigator Agent Adam Rieck was recovering in hospital,'" he said sheepishly, "and there are only so many places I could be. They have been relentless this morning. There were calls for interviews, too, although the hospital switchboard is now preventing those from getting through."

  Bolan frowned. He went to the table and looked at the bouquets closely.

  "Cooper?" Rieck said. "Is something wrong?"

  "No." Bolan shook his head. He looked up at another knock on the door; it was one of the doctors.

  "Herr Rieck?" the physician asked. He was a younger fellow, Bolan noticed. His coat looked about a size too large on him.

  "Yes, Doctor?" the Interpol agent said.

  When the "doctor" put his hand in his coat, Bolan was already in motion.

  "Eisen-Donner!" the man shouted. The Makarov pistol that came up in his hand swung on target.

  Mack Bolan slapped it away, sending the weapon flying across the room. He followed with a brutal palm heel blow that knocked the assassin reeling, snapping the young man's head back and slamming him against the wall. The would-be killer shook that off and snapped open a switchblade. He crouched low, the knife moving back and forth in front of his body as he rounded on Bolan and took a step forward.

  The soldier ripped the suppressed Beretta 93-R from his shoulder holster and snapped the safety off.

  "Drop the knife," he said. "Get on your knees."

  Rieck, looking on from his hospital bed, had the presence of mind to translate in German.

  The assassin lunged.

  Bolan put a single 9 mm round in his attacker's skull. He stepped aside as the corpse hit the waxed floor. Whipping his head around, he took in the doorway, which stood open and afforded a view of the corridor beyond. There were two more "doctors" approaching. When they saw him standing there, gun in hand, they reached into their white coats and revealed sawed-off shotguns.

  "Down!" Bolan shouted. He slammed the door shut and dodged to one side. Behind him, Rieck threw himself off the hospital bed. He landed on the floor on the other side, groaning.

  Shotgun blasts peppered the wall and shattered the window. Broken glass and fragments of plaster sprayed everywhere. Bolan, on the floor against the wall next to the door, waited for the first of the Iron Thunder cultists to come through the door. The man dived in low, thinking that would protect him. Bolan simply put a 3-round burst in the center of the crouching form. The man slowly fell over, still crouched, and breathed his last. Bolan kicked the fallen shotgun across the floor, where it skittered under the bed in Rieck's general direction.

  The Executioner considered his next move as another shotgun blast roared through the open door. The cultist who remained was standing outside, blasting away without aiming, afraid to enter but effectively keeping Bolan and Rieck pinned down. There were screams and shouts from the hallway and from neighboring rooms. Perhaps realizing that it was only a matter of time before hospital security and then police arrived, the cultist broke and ran.

  "Rieck!" Bolan called. "Pick up that shotgun and watch the door for more. I'm going after him!"

  "Right!" Rieck called.

  Bolan was up then, jumping over the dead men on the floor and throwing himself out the doorway. He caught a glimpse of the fleeing cultist as he hit the fire door at the end of the hall. The metal barrier slammed shut.

  Bolan raced down the corridor, stepped to one side of the door and opened it partway. A shotgun blast drew sparks from the metal face on the opposite side. Bolan waited and repeated the maneuver. This time there was no shot. He waited two more seconds, shut the door, then opened it yet again. Another shotgun blast tore paint from the door's surface.

  The soldier ripped the door open. The gunner, on the landing below, was pumping the action of his shotgun, chambering the next round. Bolan put a 3-round burst into him. He managed to cry out before he collapsed.

  There were more 12-gauge explosions from the direction of Rieck's room. Bolan ran back the way he'd come, bolstering the Beretta and drawing the Desert Eagle.

  A young man in street clothes and holding a snub-nosed revolver was using the side of the doorway as cover, trading shots with Rieck in the room beyond. Rieck triggered another shotgun blast. He had to be running out of ammunition. Bolan stood off a few paces and leveled the Desert Eagle.

  "Hey," he said.

  The Iron Thunder cultist turned in surprise. His eyes widened and his revolver came up. Bolan pulled the trigger, launching a .44-caliber slug that was the last thing the killer would ever experience.

  "Rieck!" Bolan called.

  "Yes?"

  "Any more of them?"

  "Not that I saw," the Interpol agent replied.

  "All right," Bolan said. "I think we're clear." He took a moment to check the corridor. "Wait here a moment."

  Hospital personnel were starting to emerge from the rooms on either side of the hallway, where they had taken cover and were trying to protect their patients. Bolan holstered his hand cannon and tried to be as reassuring as possible.

  "I
t's all right," he said, "it's under control."

  Bolan found Rieck still on the floor of his hospital room, the shotgun clutched in his hands.

  "Still feeling accomplished?" Bolan asked.

  "Jesus," he breathed. "What was that all about?"

  "That," Bolan said, "if I had to guess, was Iron Thunder trying to make a point. I'd say they're upset you've repeatedly refused to die for them."

  "Well, I do hate to be rude," Rieck wisecracked.

  "Yeah, I've been accused of the same bad manners." Bolan bent to search the two dead men on the floor. He found nothing, except a spare magazine for the Makarov. The heavy Communist Bloc weapon was lying on the floor nearby. He cleared it and put the empty gun and the magazine on the nearby table with the flowers.

  "Well, I won't say you never got me anything," Rieck said. He reached up and fished his phone from the pile of personal effects on the little nightstand next to his bed. "I'll start making calls. Again."

  "Be glad you're alive to make them," Bolan offered.

  "Well, it's clear to me I shouldn't be lying here when there are still people like that on the loose," he said. He stood and pointed to the closet. "Hand me my pants, will you? I am checking out."

  Bolan found the man's slacks in the closet, as well as his shirt and coat, and passed them over.

  Rieck grinned at him. "You know, Cooper, my local contacts have begun calling me 'Der Leichenbestatter.'"

  "What does that mean?"

  "The Undertaker."

  It took some time to get things cleaned up, and Rieck was occupied for half an hour just making explanations and straightening things out with various cooperating law-enforcement agencies. When the bodies had been taken to the morgue and several more law-enforcement officials had crawled over the room with a fine-tooth comb, Bolan got a call on his secure phone.

  "Cooper here," he said.

  "Striker," Barbara Price said, "if you're near a television, you'd better turn it on."

  There was a TV mounted to the wall in the corner of the room, where it could be seen easily from the bed. Bolan switched it on, Rieck watching him curiously. The picture was of a news anchor; the graphic on the screen behind her was the Iron Thunder logo.

  Bolan switched channels several times, but news reports had broken in on almost all of the local channels. The soldier looked at Rieck.

  "They're saying something about a major terrorist incident," Rieck said with concern. "And they keep mentioning Iron Thunder. Wait, here it comes. They're saying the recording was posted on the Internet and was also sent directly to all media outlets in the city this morning."

  The screen switched to a video of Dumar Eon. He sat in a darkened room, with the silhouetted logo of Iron Thunder behind him. His words, like those at the rally, were in English, but translated in German in glowing gothic script at the bottom of the screen.

  "People of the world," the cult leader said, "I am Dumar Eon. Some of you know me. Some of you will deny me, but you, too, in your hearts, know. The great and terrible and wonderful responsibility of bringing to you the gift of my message, of bringing to you peace, of bringing to you nothing short of a new world order, falls heavily on my shoulders this morning. You will not understand, not all of you. But some of you will. Even as Iron Thunder, the organization I represent, shows you the way, builds you the way, burns you the way, cuts and stabs and shoots and chokes you the way, you may yet resist. But we are Iron Thunder, and we understand. We do what we do out of love for you."

  Eon paused and held up a simple tourist postcard. "You see this place? This place is a symbol. It is a symbol of the old world order. It is a place where little people go to live their little lives, hoping to soothe the ache in their souls with possessions, with goods, with things. It is a place where those in need seek to medicate themselves until they are insensate, but never do those poor souls really address the true causes of their pain. It is for this reason that my people and I bring our message to those who are suffering this day. On this day, now and forever, those of you who persist, who go on after, will know that this is the day we began to bring you the beautiful gift, the blissful gift, the only gift You will look to the ruins of what was and you will remember. You will long for that gift yourselves."

  Eon held the postcard higher. The camera zoomed in on it. Bolan could see a glass-fronted building bearing the words Gropius Passagen. He looked at Rieck.

  "That's a shopping mall," Rieck said. "Here in Berlin."

  On the screen, the camera pulled back and Eon brought a gold cigarette lighter to the bottom of the card. He flicked it alight and began to burn the postcard. "On this day," he said, "the first of many acts of liberation begins. I am Dumar Eon. I am Iron Thunder. I am Iron Thunder. I am Iron Thunder... and so shall you be."

  The video ended and the news anchor reappeared. The graphic behind her was replaced with a photo of the same shopping mall.

  "This is confirmed?" Bolan said into his phone.

  "Yes," Price said. "Iron Thunder took the Gropius Passagen mall this morning. The locals have cordoned off the area and are waiting for demands."

  "There won't be any demands," Bolan said. "Eon doesn't want a ransom. He wants coverage. You heard him. He's got a wayward world that he wants to guide to the wonderful glories of being dead."

  "We know," Price said. "Hal's burning up the phones trying to secure cooperation and advise the locals that they're dealing with a potential chemical weapons disaster, but they're not happy and they don't want to hear it. They're already on edge. You've been doing your best to burn the city down around their ears, the way they see it."

  "Are they going in?"

  "No," Price said flatly. "They don't want to risk losing hostages, like that schoolhouse in Chechnya. They'd rather try to cut a deal."

  "We can't wait," Bolan said. "There won't be any deal, not with Dumar Eon. There's no telling what resources he could have brought to bear on this, but if the Consortium was selling nerve gas to the Syrians, Iron Thunder could have as much of it as they'll ever want or need."

  "Understood," Price said. "We received all of your transmitted files. The materials at the Berlin safehouse were secured, of course. But you're right. There's no way to know what else could be waiting."

  "I'm going to have to go in," Bolan said. "Tell Hal so he can try to clear a path for me. I'm putting an end to this right now."

  "I know," Price said. "I won't tell you to be careful."

  "Thanks," Bolan said. He cut the connection.

  "Cooper?" Rieck said. "You're not actually going to... Oh, of course you are. Why do I delude myself?"

  "It's been good working with you," Bolan said, offering his hand. "You're a good man, Rieck."

  "You're not leaving me behind," the Interpol agent said. "I'm coming with you."

  "It's going to get bloody," Bolan warned.

  "What do you call this?" Rieck gestured to the room, which had suffered greatly under the pellets and bullets of the gun battle.

  "All right," Bolan said. "Then let's go."

  17

  The Gropius Passagen, Berlin's largest shopping center, was a multilevel mall covering more than eighty-seven thousand square meters and boasting nearly two hundred shops and restaurants. Price transmitted a data file to Bolan's phone, with floor plans and whatever other useful data the Farm's computers had produced on the site. According to the data dump, the mall saw no less than sixty thousand visitors a day, on average. It was, in short, exactly the sort of high-profile target a terrorist madman like Dumar Eon would choose for a public massacre.

  Rieck drove Bolan's rented BMW. He brought the car to a stop at the police roadblock, flashing his credentials to the submachine-gun-toting officers manning the cordon. He parked on the street, not far from an entrance to the structure.

  The large, curved, glass-fronted entry was dotted with colorful signs proclaiming the names of some of the stores within. More police were stationed there. Rieck stopped and conferred with them; they were
less suspicious than the first officers because the two newcomers had already been screened at the outer cordon. Finally, Rieck nodded to them both and then moved aside to confer with Bolan.

  "All right, Cooper," Rieck said. He motioned the big man to a mall directory just outside the entrance. "I've got as much as we can get from them. We are here." He pointed. "They tell me Dumar Eon and his people have set up... here." He indicated another spot on the map. "That part is open. It's an atrium of sorts, where multiple levels are visible from the center. The Iron Thunder cultists have stationed themselves there — for what reason, we do not know. I am told we can get a view of this from the upper level. If we take these lifts..." he pointed again "...and then work our way over, we will be able to see them from relative concealment."

  "Good work," Bolan said. "All right, let's move."

  Bland music was playing over the seemingly deserted shopping center's speakers as the two men made their way to the elevators Rieck had identified. Price's data file had included the latest news updates available at the time, as well as some unconfirmed law-enforcement reports. Those tourists and other civilians who could evacuate already had. Eon had apparently taken quite a few people hostage, but his force was relatively small. He hadn't attempted to control the entire complex. The location wasn't well-suited to that sort of play, at any rate. It was too large, too open, with too many entrances and exits. No, the Gropius Mall would have appealed to Dumar Eon because it was a popular tourist attraction and, probably, because it was an icon of consumerism. It was the kind of public place that terrorists would be delighted to hit because seeing violence in such a locale upset people greatly. It was a blow to their sense of normalcy, a strike at the foundations of their routines.

  Bolan didn't like the thought of being trapped in an elevator, but there was no choice. If they wished to remain undetected for as long as possible, they'd have to ride the elevator. The two men rode to the upper level in silence. The soldier checked his weapons and his spare magazines, shifting the war bag on his shoulder. He had been wearing his drover coat, but now he shed it. Rieck, likewise, dropped his trench coat. He had his MP-5 K on its shoulder sling, with several spare magazines in a pouch at his waist.