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  "Harassment?"

  "Being followed, some late-night hang-up calls, and a few incidents of vandalism at his home here in Berlin," Rieck said, pulling a hard copy of a digital photograph from the stack. The building it depicted appeared to be an apartment or condominium high-rise, its architecture a blend of old-world charm and modern efficiency. It looked pricey, if Bolan was any judge. It was, in other words, just the sort of place a president or CEO would call home in this German city.

  "And BA itself?" Bolan asked. The students he had noticed before, a young man and two women, were settling at a table by the corner. One woman was blond, the other brunette. The blonde in particular was a striking Norse beauty. Bolan had seen plenty of beautiful women in his unending war against terror. He'd seen more than a few who had been pretty before the predators got done with them, too. It was a sobering thought.

  "Offices here, on Reinickendorfer Strasse," Rieck said, "and a secondary manufacturing facility maybe an hour from the city, in Muencheberg."

  "Were does Becker spend his time?"

  "The accidental deaths of some of his contemporaries in the high-tech field here in Germany haven't gone unnoticed to Becker," Rieck said, as if he and Bolan were sharing a very important secret. "He's been holed up in his suite for the last week, and we know he has employed a bodyguard agency here in the city. They're expensive, thoroughly licensed and heavily armed."

  "Your recommendation?" Bolan asked, ignoring Rieck's conspiratorial tone.

  "I would start with Muencheberg," Rieck said. "If Becker's holdings are being monitored, we might be able to find some of the operatives responsible. We might even catch them in the act of vandalizing Becker's property. These incidents have increased sharply in the past several days. There have been three reports in the last week alone."

  "It's a start," Bolan said. "But if Becker is the target, it's Becker we should begin with. He's the key. Removing him removes the primary obstacle to the Consortium's acquisition of his company. If they orchestrated the problems that have put BA in deep, which it's likely they have, it makes even more sense that they're setting him up for a heavy fall."

  "But he's guarded," Rieck said. "Won't that keep him out of play for now?"

  "I've never known it to mean much in the past," Bolan said. "Hired guards are hired guards. They're good as far as they go. But his apartment is no fortress. How could it be? I've seen hard targets, Rieck. This won't qualify."

  "Well, all right," Rieck began, "but I don't see why..."

  The beautiful blonde at the table in the corner reached into her backpack. Bolan was watching her out of the corner of his eye. When her arm came up with a micro-Uzi submachine gun in her small fist, he had just enough time to register the threat. He put one hand against the table and pushed off.

  Automatic gunfire ripped through the coffee shop.

  2

  "Down!" Bolan roared, throwing himself back and off his chair. Rieck reacted quickly and hit the floor. The burst of bullets went wide but stitched the wall behind and between the two men nonetheless. Rieck would have been dead had he stayed seated a fraction of a second longer.

  Screams erupted as the coffee shop's customers registered what was happening. Suddenly the shop was full of running, hysterical men and women, shouting in at least three languages.

  Rieck upended the table and crouched behind its dubious cover, drawing his four-inch Smith & Wesson. Bolan had seen this type of scenario go down more than once, and knew that hiding or playing a time-compressed waiting game simply wouldn't work. With each passing second, the risk that an innocent civilian would be hit increased. He pulled the Beretta 93-R from its custom leather shoulder rig, flipped the selector to single shot and brought the snout of the evil-looking little machine pistol on target. Then he charged forward, moving left, then right, crouching low, being careful not to put innocents into the line of fire by getting between them and the shooters. The Beretta led the way, and as he charged, Bolan fired.

  The desperate offensive took the momentum from the attackers. The Executioner had seen that sudden look of confusion before, the instant when an enemy, having visualized the killing time and again, suddenly locked up or froze when confronted with something unexpected. These shooters were the hunters, in their minds; they had come to deal death. They didn't expect to see death hurtling back at them. The enemy broke under the onslaught, scattering. Bolan caught the blonde with the Uzi first.

  She was trying to swing her submachine gun onto him when Bolan reached her, slamming a brutal elbow up and across her chin, knocking her sprawling. The Uzi slid from nerveless fingers as she went down and out. The man, not as young as his college dress had made him seem from a distance, had drawn a small automatic pistol from under his clothes and was taking aim. Bolan put a single 9 mm bullet between his eyes, and he collapsed to the floor of the coffee shop.

  The third shooter, the other woman, screamed as she traded fire with Rieck. The Interpol agent's shots were truer, clipping her in the arm and sending her screaming to the ground. Bolan scooped up the revolver she'd been carrying, turned and stood over her, the Beretta aimed at her head. "Do not move," he ordered.

  Rieck, coming up to stand behind him, said something in German, which Bolan understood to be the same instructions. The young woman, pretty enough, with dark, naturally curly hair and fine-boned features, looked at them with such hatred that her face became a mask of ugly evil. She cursed in German. Bolan spared a glance at Rieck.

  "She says you will know everlasting peace," Rieck said, nonplussed.

  "That's a new one," Bolan said. "Let's get this mopped up."

  Rieck proved his worth, barking orders, taking immediate charge of the chaotic scene. His Interpol credentials got a workout as he directed the customers to sit and calm down, while ordering the nearest shop attendant to call the appropriate authorities. Bolan, meanwhile, secured the two women with plastic zip-tie cuffs, searched them and then searched the corpse. He found nothing useful. There were only a few personal items like combs and brushes, a small folding knife in the dead man's pocket, and extra ammunition for the weapons they carried. Bolan unloaded and set aside the Uzi, the dead man's ancient Colt .380 automatic pistol, and the Smith & Wesson snub nose the wounded woman had tried to use.

  Flashing blue lights outside alerted the men to the approach of the local police. "There they are," Rieck said, rising to look over the shell-shocked customers one last time. He nodded to Bolan. "I'll make sure that ambulance is on the way." There was no telling how many of the shop's customers were suffering shock. Routine medical treatment was needed as part of containing the shooting and its aftermath.

  The front door of the coffee shop opened again.

  The men who entered, dressed in dark suits, carried Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns. The man in the lead raised his weapon at Rieck. The killing intent in his eyes was unmistakable. This wasn't backup.

  Rieck went for his gun, but there was no way he would make it in time. Death waited for him in the chamber of the lead shooter's MP-5.

  Bolan's Desert Eagle thundered.

  The .44 Magnum hollowpoint round took the gunner in the face, rocking him back. The gunner behind him faltered as he watched his partner suddenly go down, and Bolan shot him neatly through the neck. Yelling for Rieck to get down — the agent obligingly flattened himself — the big American emptied the Desert Eagle's magazine through the doorway, targeting the silver Mercedes parked at the curb outside. The heavy rounds punched through the passenger-side front tire and fender, skimming across the hood and driving another gunner to cover behind the engine block.

  "Go, go!" Bolan directed. Rieck scrambled forward, snatched up the Uzi Bolan had taken from the blonde, and slammed its magazine home on the move. Unbidden, the Interpol agent broke right while Bolan broke left, both men pushing through the doors and into the nighttime hellstorm outside.

  The soldier quickly assessed the scenario. There were two vehicles, both silver Mercedes. He quickly counte
d targets. There were a half-dozen men, at least, moving in and around the cars, weapons at the ready. He ducked and dodged aside, Rieck mirroring his movements, as gunfire struck the windows behind them. There were more screams from within the coffee shop. Bolan snapped his gaze back long enough to confirm that the customers were on the floor, out of the direct line of fire. Grimly, he ripped the Beretta from its holster, both pistols in his fists now as he aimed first the Desert Eagle, then the Beretta, and pulled the triggers.

  The 3-round burst from the Beretta 93-R caught the nearest shooter as he bobbed up from behind the engine block of the shot-up Mercedes. The man went down with a burst through his throat. Then the Executioner was up and over, throwing himself across the hood of the car. He came down on the other side next to the dead man, surprising two shooters crouched in the open driver's doors.

  One of the men got off a shot that went wide as Bolan triggered a .44 round through his face. At the same moment, the Beretta 93-R barked, punching a 3-round burst through the heart of the second man. Both gunners went slack in their seats.

  The unmistakable chatter of an Uzi, so familiar a sound to Bolen after years on international battlefields, erupted from behind the second vehicle. Rieck was crouched low and moving smoothly behind the rear of the car. He was canted slightly forward, leaning into the submachine gun, triggering short, controlled bursts. It was textbook mechanics for such a weapon. Bolan raised his mental estimation of the agent once more; the man thought clearly enough under fire to recover the terrorist weapon and use it to good effect, and he obviously had the training to do it properly. Rieck's 9 mm bursts dropped two more of the suited shooters.

  The last two men — no, three, Bolan revised, as a third man came from around the corner of the coffee shop and ran for the street — began to withdraw, covering each other in turn with their weapons. The suppressing fire from first one, then the other MP-5 pushed Bolan and Rieck back down behind the two Mercedes sedans.

  Bolan went prone, rolling into position under the middle of his car. He placed the Beretta on the pavement and aimed the Desert Eagle with both hands, targeting the retreating, then running men. These would be difficult shots.

  There was no better marksman than the Executioner.

  The first .44 slug caught the trailing shooter in the ankle. He screamed and fell, rolling on the wet pavement. The MP-5 was still in his fists, so Bolan dealt him a shot to the head.

  The soldier's third bullet caught the middle runner in mid-calf. He folded over without a sound, almost somersaulting as he lost his footing. Bolan could hear his skull crack on the pavement.

  Bolan's fourth bullet took the farthest gunner in one thigh. He stumbled and nearly fell, but somehow managed to keep moving. The momentary crouch was all the Executioner needed. He snapped another long-distance shot into the man's head. The body hit the sidewalk on the far side of the street, a crumpled heap beside a storm drain.

  Rieck popped up and brought the Uzi forward. He stalked ahead, just a few steps at a time, scanning the surrounding area. Bolan did the same, watching his side while the Interpol agent covered the other. They moved around the cars once, then again, checking to make sure all of the new shooters had been taken.

  •'Clear!" Rieck called.

  "Clear," Bolan stated. He checked once more, then reloaded and holstered the Desert Eagle. The Beretta 93-R he reloaded but kept at the ready.

  "Start checking bodies," he instructed Rieck. Til see if we've got any live ones." Specifically, he was interested in the gunner who'd hit his head. It was possible he was still alive. Bolan checked the other two first, confirming they were dead, then knelt next to the man in question. He fingered the neck for a pulse and then rolled the body over.

  The man stared back, eyes lifeless and glassy. Bolan could tell from the angle the head lolled that the shooter had broken his neck in the fall. Bolan swore. He'd hoped for a live enemy to interrogate, but that couldn't be helped. Searching through the man's pockets, he found an extra magazine for the MP-5 in the suit jacket. There was also a fixed-blade fighting knife strapped inside the dead man's waistband at the small of his back. He carried nothing else. No identification. Bolan left the knife where it was and stood. Rieck was quietly and efficiently going through the other dead men's pockets.

  In the distance, the seesaw foghorn of German police sirens could be heard. The legitimate German authorities were responding, either to Rieck's calls or to the sounds of gunfire. Bolan saw civilians, bystanders, poking their heads out from behind improvised cover: a man behind a kiosk here, a woman with two small children, out late, hiding in a doorway there. Keeping these people from the cross fire was the primary reason he had brought hell to the enemy, yet again.

  Rieck looked mildly wild-eyed. He shucked the empties from his Smith & Wesson — a .357 Magnum, Bolan noted — and popped in a speedloader of fresh rounds.

  "Did you find anything?" he asked.

  "No." Bolan shook his head. "You?"

  Rieck held out a single laminated ID card. It bore credentials in German, with a photo ID. The name Sicherheit Vereinigung.

  "The Security Consortium." Bolan looked up at Rieck.

  "Do you think those three in the shop..."

  "No," Bolan said. "Not likely, anyway."

  "I don't understand what happened," Rieck said. "First those three in the shop, and then this group."

  "Assassins," Bolan said. "That much is obvious. The first three were amateurs. Vicious, but amateurs. These..." he nodded to the bodies of the shooters from the Mercedes "...are professionals. The Consortium sent its hired guns after you. Somebody wants you dead, Rieck."

  "But how? And why?"

  "You had to have been followed," Bolan said.

  "I could believe I was followed by those three kids," Rieck said. "They'd blend in easily enough. But three kids and a parade of Mercedes sedans full of professional soldiers? I may not have your experience, Cooper, but I'm not that stupid."

  "All right." Bolan nodded. "These Consortium shooters' involvement remains an unknown. But suddenly you're very popular."

  "How do you know it was me, and not you?"

  "Well," Bolan said, "you're the only person locally who even knew to meet me. I find it hard to believe my mission has been blown completely so quickly. That girl with the Uzi targeted you first, too."

  "You saw that?"

  "I see everything," Bolan said dismissively. "That's not the point. Those 'kids' were obviously after you, so they must have been following you, unless someone else knew where we'd be meeting. It's the only logical answer."

  "No," Rieck said. "I picked the shop myself and had your people relay it. I assume you trust them and their communications?"

  "Absolutely," Bolan said. There was no way his secure satellite phone or Stony Man Farm's scrambled up- and downlinks could be compromised, at least at this stage of the game. If the Consortium already knew he was here, and where to find him, the mission was over before it had started. He didn't think that likely, though he'd been party to plenty of operations in which everything that could go wrong had.

  "Did anyone else at Interpol locally know to whom you'd been assigned, or why?" Bolan asked.

  "A few," Rieck admitted. "I'd hate to think we have a leak in the agency."

  "You might," Bolan said. "That, too, is the simplest explanation."

  "Well, we'll see about that," Rieck said. "Once they've been checked by the medics we'll get those two women across the table in an interrogation room and see if we can get them to tell us anything." They had reached the front of the coffee shop. Rieck put his hand out, swinging the door open.

  He stopped. Somewhere in the corner of the shop, one of the witnesses was sobbing. Another man began to protest loudly in German. Bolan didn't know the words, but he knew the tone: Hey, man, it wasn 't me, I dîdn 't do anything.

  "Jesus," Rieck said. The toe of his shoe was red with blood.

  Bolan pushed past him and checked first one, then the other prisoner.
He didn't blame the bystanders for not interfering. Chances were, they'd been unaware of precisely what they were seeing until it was too late. Only a few minutes' inattention, while Bolan and Rieck were contending with the new shooters, was all the captured shooters had needed. The two women had pushed themselves together on the floor, presumably after the blonde had regained consciousness. Then the two of them had evidently opened each other's necks... with their teeth.

  "Sweet mother of..." Rieck muttered. "Cooper, what could inspire such an act?"

  Bolan looked down at the two dead women, adding the ghastly scene to the too-long catalog in his mind.

  "Are they?" Rieck asked.

  "Yeah," Bolan said. "They are."

  The sirens outside grew louder. Rieck checked, his hand on his gun, ready for anything. "The police and two ambulances. Too late for them, I guess." He nodded to the dead women.

  Bolan shook his head. He'd seen plenty of fanatics willing to kill or die for their cause. Call it a gut instinct, but these women didn't seem to be the type to take their lives for an abstract slogan. No, rather than a cause, rather than a vague "what," this type of brutal self-sacrifice was most often, in Bolan's experience, committed for a "who."

  So Rieck's question stood. They'd have to answer it, too, because it was central to the battle they now fought. This force, this entity, this malevolent being, stood at the center of the maelstrom of violence now threatening to storm across Germany. They needed to know, sooner rather than later.

  Just who could inspire this kind of bloodshed?

  3

  The man known to followers worldwide as Dumar Eon leaned back in his swiveling office chair, steepling his fingers as he stared out the grimy window to the rain-soaked nighttime streets of Berlin. The distant traffic, its rattle and roar incessant and rhythmic, was like a heartbeat. Often he listened to the city, this delightfully sick, this terminally ill city, and fancied he would be there on the day that Berlin's heart stopped forever.