Season of Slaughter Read online

  “Chicago will be under such mayhem, reliable news won’t get out. If people do get out of the airport and to other parts of the country or other countries, the plague will spread, and raise even more noise-to-information so that the RING’s cannon fodder won’t know what the hell is happening. And even if they do find out, what is a single militia group or an al-Qaeda splinter cell in comparison who other pawn organizations we know nothing about?” Bolan asked. “Three heads lopped off, six more to take their place.”

  “But how are you sure what kind of distribution these guys have?” Price asked.

  Bolan’s lips drew tight. “Gut instinct. It’s the simplest thing possible. The RING needs to do something massive. They’re going to dump a load of highly communicable disease into the middle of one of the country’s largest airports, and they have a large number of people to do it with. We have no possible way of cordoning off O’Hare short of having the Army clamp down, and when we do that, the RING has suddenly put the fear of God into the whole country anyway.”

  “Another battle at another airport isn’t going to do much to alleviate the terror the country is in right now,” Price said. “We’re already trying to get O’Hare Security, the FAA and the Chicago police coordinated in response to the RING’s follow-up. Hal’s in Chicago, too, with a whole contingent of Justice Department personnel trying to get the entire city ready for Armageddon.”

  Bolan could see O’Hare International Airport. Grimaldi was already calling ahead to arrange a landing at the old National Guard refueling base airstrip. Buck Greene and his blacksuits had set up shop there after Bolan and Grimaldi had taken off only the day before.

  The world was a blur around the Executioner. “We’re at O’Hare now, Barb. Just about to land.”

  “Striker, just be careful.”

  A little part of the Executioner died as he heard the cracking pain in her voice. “It’s too late for careful.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As soon as they saw Adonis enter the mall, Rosario Blancanales and Hermann Schwarz shrugged into their load bearing vests and pulled weapons up from under the floorboards of the passenger section. The entire mission had gone south because of the blond giant’s presence.

  Jackie Sorenson looked back at her comrades. “I’ll drive.”

  Blancanales and Schwarz paused.

  “We’re sorry we dragged you into this,” Schwarz told her.

  “I’m not,” Sorenson answered. “Hand me a mini-Uzi and a pistol. They might try to take shots at me through the windshield and I want to be able to return fire.”

  Blancanales put a Colt .45 and a mini-Uzi in her small, dainty hands. “You know how to fire these?”

  “I spend every other weekend at a range,” Sorenson responded. “It’s a hobby.” She cleared and checked the Colt, then stuffed it between her thigh and the seat. She did the same with the mini-Uzi and hung it on its sling around her neck. “I know a few friends who get me range time every month with full-auto weapons, too.”

  Blancanales pointed to the entrance away from the department store and the restaurant. “Nobody is going through that entrance. We’ll keep the fighting away from the restaurant. Chances are that the mission itself is keeping its offices out of sight of prying eyes, so if we do run into trouble, bystanders will be running like hell out the other way.”

  “I don’t even think the ’Mart is connected to the main mall,” Schwarz replied. He checked the Reflex scope atop his M-4 assault rifle. Accuracy was going to be the number-one rule in a potentially bystander-rich environment.

  Blancanales looked, then gave a grim nod of agreement, clicking an M-203 grenade launcher sleeve over the barrel of his M-4. “Cuts down on potential trouble with the bystanders. Course, you never know. We might not have to do anything.”

  Sorenson pursed her lips. “I’ll scout.”

  “We can’t risk your life.”

  “Dammit, guys. Ski is in there, and he could need help.”

  She peeled herself out of her jacket, attaching a communicator with a throat microphone. The earpiece and its wire disappeared under her silken hair. Schwarz gave her an adjustable shoulder holster for the mini-Uzi and the Colt .45. Her lumpy windbreaker hid both guns and the radio admirably.

  Sorenson slipped out of the driver’s seat.

  “And then there’s Adonis, nature’s proof that Godzilla wasn’t the baddest cat humankind could imagine,” Schwarz continued.

  “He scares the Japanese. We Americans are tougher than that,” Sorenson answered, racking the bolt on her Uzi for emphasis. She winked at Schwarz.

  Sorenson smiled and closed the van door. “Be careful, Jackie,” Schwarz called.

  “I will,” she answered.

  She took the second entrance, seeing that it was unlocked, and walked in, stopping to peruse the Christian bookstore just off the entrance. From that corner, she could see down the center court of the mall. It wasn’t much, just a single-story strip with storefronts on both sides, most of them abandoned or turned into missionary office space.

  She spotted Adonis and Kowalski walking toward her, away from the Filipino men who had accompanied them into the restaurant. Sorenson keyed her throat mike.

  “They separated from the Filipinos,” she whispered.

  “Roger,” Blancanales answered.

  “Peter, please don’t make a scene,” she heard the big man say.

  Kowalski looked up at Adonis, and she heard the replacement Stony Man warrior quote a piece of verse.

  He was preparing to fight to the death against a giant who could break him in two like a twig. Her heart went out to the blacksuit.

  “Pol. Gadgets…now!”

  The Able Team van blasted noisily through the glass behind Sorenson. She was already taking cover in the bookstore’s entrance, but still, flying glass pelted her jacket and a chunk with a particularly sharp corner cut across her eyebrow. The sudden dodge for cover made her back hurt, but she dropped to a combat crouch anyway, flipping the mini-Uzi from its hiding spot under her coat.

  “Ski!” Sorenson shouted, firing off a burst into Adonis. The big man took a 3-round burst, center of mass, and looked down at himself, then incredulously at Sorenson.

  “That’s the second time today someone’s shot me!” Adonis growled, hand lunging for a gun under his own coat.

  Kowalski exploded into action as the giant shifted his balance. He grabbed onto Adonis’s shoulder and kicked off of the floor with all his strength, legs snapping up and wrapping around the titan’s neck. With a twist of his stout body, he was yanking the golden-maned murderer off his feet and driving him forward.

  Behind Sorenson, Blancanales and Schwarz were exiting the van, M-4s up and tracking. Doors burst open from the missionary offices, but it wasn’t bibles and medical supplies these men were carrying. Not unless they fired 9 mm Parabellum rounds at a rate of 800 rpm.

  Sorenson couldn’t open fire on the monster known as Adonis without peppering Kowalski with a hail of lead, so she turned her aim toward the Filipino gunmen.

  All hell broke loose when Blancanales sailed a 40 mm M 651 CS gas canister from his M-203. A white cloud filled the air, inflaming the mucus membranes and tear ducts of everyone within range.

  KOWALSKI AND ADONIS struck the ground with a thump that masked the sound of the grenade launcher going off, but the swirling storm of stringing mist caught the U.S. Marshall’s attention long enough for him to be grabbed by the six-and-a-half-foot-tall monstrosity he was in desperate combat with. Cursing himself as he felt those enormous fingers dig into his thigh, he let loose with a growl and punched the big man in the temple.

  Adonis grunted and thrashed his head, as if to throw off the effects of the blow, and shrugged one shoulder, tossing off his adversary. The ex-Marine rolled to his feet, staring at the still-prone titan. Kowalski lunged forward, hands clasped in a hammer punch that chopped down onto his enemy’s massive chest. The impact felt like slamming a drum and sounded half as loud. Adonis’s breat
h exploded from his lips, but he reacted by slamming an elbow across Kowalski’s jaw, throwing him aside like a rag doll.

  The blonde reached for his gun again and Kowalski did a baseball slide that rammed into his hip and kidney. The impact felt like skidding into a brick wall, but the towering terrorist’s grip on his gun wasn’t complete. With a desperate twist, he brought his boot around and hammered it into Adonis’s forearm. The Desert Eagle sailed from numbed fingers, clattering on the imitation brick floor.

  Kowalski tried to push his luck for all it was worth, bringing his heel up into Adonis’s clean-shaved, lantern jaw. Blood exploded from a broken nose and upper lip all across the blacksuit’s sneaker, but his ankle was trapped in a cast-iron grip. Adonis cast his cold, blue eyes down on the smaller man.

  “That was your last free shot,” he growled.

  Kowalski smiled.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Kowalski lifted himself up hard and kicked the giant under his armpit. “You’re bleeding! You bleed. I can kill you.”

  “Peter…”

  “The name’s Ski,” Kowalski answered, getting up.

  “Ski. Good. I like to know the names of men I rip in two with my bare hands.”

  Kowalski wasn’t hearing much now. Crimson tainted his vision. His ears filled with the freight-train roar of racing, hot, adrenaline-charged blood. A split second seizure of muscles swept over him.

  With a savage roar, the two men charged each other, ignoring the raging gun battle surrounding them.

  “JACKIE, STAY THERE!” Schwarz called. He shouldered his rifle and pumped a couple rounds into a pistol-toting Filipino, the 5.56 mm hollowpoints leaping through the target’s chest at nearly four times the speed of sound. The impacts reduced his vital organs to soup as the hypervelocity slugs peeled open from their cup tips and disintegrated in fluid mass.

  The Abu Sayyaf gunman crashed back through the doorway, others tripping over him as a second M-651 tear gas round punched farther down the line of the mall’s court. Blancanales was laying out the choking smoke to keep bystanders down and away from the gunfight.

  Schwarz dived to the ground as the van’s windshield and grille were lit up by a spray of sparks. Return fire impacted, tearing up steel and shattering glass. He was glad that the van’s engine was protected by a sheet of armor plate, because after a blowout like this, they’d need to extract like lightning.

  Out of the corner of his eye, the Able Team commando was certain that he spotted two sinewy animals lunging at each other, an inhuman set of roars splitting the air above the sound of staccato muzzle-blasts. Kowalski and Adonis were stopped against each other, whatever semblance of humanity that their companion bore stripped away as he engaged in savage combat with the golden-maned terrorist. Schwarz was drawn away from the battle by men coming up a stairwell in the open hub of this end of the mall. Railing surrounded a thirty-foot gap in the floor, winding staircases twisting a level down.

  The gunmen were opening up, bullets ripping too high to catch the floored Able Team electronics genius, but that didn’t mean Schwarz was going to let their assault go unanswered. He rolled and swung down on them. From behind him, he heard Sorenson’s mini-Uzi ripping out its unique message, the two Able Team partners united once more in laying down a hail of vengeance against a heavily armed menace. Bodies crashed and tumbled back down the stairs, not even making it to the main floor.

  “Pol! Jackie! I’m going down!” Schwarz called.

  “Got you covered,” Blancanales answered.

  Schwarz burst to his feet and raced to the steps. A couple gunners were waiting for him on a landing just out of sight of the van, but from the top of the stairs, they were in open view to their judgment. The Able Team warrior triggered his M-4, ripping bursts into the two shooters, hammering them against the railing with a volley of 5.56 mm nails before they tumbled twelve feet to the sublevel below. Schwarz tore down the steps and was well below before the corpses stopped moving on the floor.

  Making the turn, he spotted more men bursting out from behind a heavy fire door, weapons filling their hands and grim resolve etched upon their faces. Schwarz brought up his M-4, sidestepping behind the cover of the stairs, and triggered three long bursts that swept the Filipinos at chest level. Bodies gyrated under the slaughtering impacts.

  Schwarz found himself driven back under cover by a hail of return fire that sent chips of concrete and tufts of carpeting flying in a cloud of debris from the staircase. He let the rifle drop on its sling, pulling one of his special flying disk grenades from his pocket. Setting the timer to four seconds, he flicked the disk-bomb out in an arc, then crouched low, letting out a yell to equalize the pressure in his ears.

  Moments later, thunder ripped through the underground section as the remaining gunners were torn apart by the shock wave of the lethal disk-bomb, a small disk formed entirely from plastic explosives, with a ring of porcelain baked into the rim to make shrapnel. Add a low weight, low-profile timer and detonator, and the little hellbomb was perfect for launching into a crowd of malcontents, yet discreet enough to keep in a pocket.

  Schwarz swung around, assault rifle in hand again, searching for more enemy targets. One gunman had escaped most of the blast, and even though he was covered in blood, he was still struggling for a backup pistol. The Able Team commando’s rifle stuttered, making short work of the Filipino would-be champion. Blood and gore sprayed out of his back as the point-blank fusillade ripped through him.

  Schwarz raced to the door. Above, the gun battle raged on, but the fire door drew the warrior. Dozens of heavily armed guards didn’t spring out of offices without something going on. The basement was going to be ground zero.

  Throwing open the door, the Able Team commando saw the muzzle-flashes of four guns. Hot blood exploded down his side as he spun to the ground.

  KOWALSKI DIDN’T HAVE much of an advantage against Adonis, but what he did have was leverage. The giant’s long, powerful arms left him vulnerable at close range. Kowalski had that much of a battle strategy, and he lunged in close, fists hammering at the pillar of muscle, swinging around the larger man’s sides to strike him in the kidneys. A grunt escaped the taller man’s lips and he brought his big arms down, trying to claw at the man latching on to him.

  Instead, Kowalski wrapped his arms under Adonis’s thighs and heaved. The three-hundred pounds of writhing flesh that made up the terrifying fighting machine was suddenly upended by the blacksuit who spun him. Both bodies whirled in a tornado of muscle, bone and sinew until finally the smaller man let go. The blond titan’s hair flowed like molten gold as he soared through another storefront display, glass shattering.

  Kowalski lunged, shrieking in raw fury, only to be swatted aside by a Victorian-style chair, bowed wooden legs shattering on his stocky body. Stunned for a moment, he gave Adonis an opening that wasn’t to be missed. Massive fists rained down into him, shocking hammers of flesh and bone crushing into him with relentless persistence. Kowalski buckled and dropped back.

  Adonis moved in too quick, sensing victory, then suddenly sidestepped. It was too late to avoid Kowalski’s kick, but most of the force only glanced off the bigger man’s knee. Instead of cracking the limb, the kick merely unbalanced the six-and-a-half-foot monster, dropping him into range of Kowalski’s lashing fists.

  A thunderbolt of a fist crashed against the U.S. Marshall’s head and the world alternated between blackness and lightning for a few moments. He staggered away from his adversary. He had raised his hands to ward off the next in a rain of dooming punches when an Uzi ripped off to his right. He glanced and saw Sorenson racing to his side, her weapon fanning at the big man. Adonis twisted, bringing up a table to block the bullets from crashing into his head.

  Perceptions hyped by adrenaline, Kowalski watched as 9 mm slugs struck Adonis’s jacket and bulletproof vest, bullets raising puffs of dust from shattered drywall and powdered glass clinging to his clothes. He didn’t even react to the onslaught of automatic
fire hammering into his chest, and Sorenson growled in frustration as her mini-Uzi locked empty.

  She swung the frame of her Uzi, steel meeting flesh in an ugly sounding collision. The giant’s head whipped around and he swung back, glaring at the tiny woman.

  “I’m sick of you, bitch!” Adonis growled. He reached out for Sorenson, but the woman was a trained martial artist. She deflected the hand and snapped a knife-strike hard into a nerve juncture in the giant’s biceps. The big man growled and grabbed at Sorenson’s belt, hefting her in the air, ready to smash her spine to powder with a single body slam.

  Kowalski came out of nowhere, both fists crushing themselves against the side of his opponent’s head in an explosion of flying blond hair and blood. All three bodies tumbled to the ground, and it was all that Sorenson could do to bring her legs under her, cushion her fall and back from the pair.

  She reached for her 1911 pistol, but a spray of bullets chopped the wall behind her.

  Sorenson didn’t even have to stop to make a choice. She turned and engaged the gunmen, leaving Kowalski to continue containing the escapee from a horror movie.

  Kowalski whipped down fists, banging on Adonis like a bongo drum, his eyes wild, grunts escaping his mouth. He was reduced to inarticulate fury, lashing out at his dreaded enemy. This was the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people at Dulles International Airport.

  And the murderer had done it over David Kowalski’s helpless body.

  The bastard was going to pay with every ounce of furious impact that the rampaging ex-blacksuit could muster.

  “Ski!” Sorenson shouted.

  Kowalski awakened from his fury to look at the face of Adonis, reduced to a gory field of craters and mountainous swelling. Both of the big man’s eyes were puffed shut and blood poured from his lips. Chilling horror filled the young blacksuit as he realized the sheer havoc he’d released onto the murderer. He recoiled, crawling off the downed murderer suddenly in fear that he’d become a similar monster. He whirled to see Sorenson being targeted by a trio of gunmen.