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  Bolan began scraping away wood on the other side. Here it was harder work. The jamb was tougher, moister than the door. The scrape of the knife blade seemed louder, and the splintering crack each time he levered away a chunk, positively deafening.

  From time to time he paused, listening. Sometimes, faintly, he could hear muffled footsteps from above. No voices were audible, but there was still a hint of music swelling and fading on the cold night air, and once he heard a door slam and a crackle of exhaust as someone gunned the engine of a roadster. Among the trees in the back of the house an owl hooted sporadically.

  Bolan had exposed the threaded shaft of a screw securing the plate to which the iron loop was fixed when he heard the hoods returning. There could be no mistake about it: heavy steps treading down a stone stairway, brutish voices that he recognized, echoing between the walls.

  He cursed softly. He was almost finished. Leaning on the door as hard as he could, he saw the screw shift imperceptibly in its wooden bed, but the plate-padlock-hasp combination held firm.

  Crouching, he put his eye to the irregular gap he had gouged away. He saw a dimly lit passageway, an arched opening in the wall with the stairway curving up behind it, and the corridor continuing beyond the arch with more doors on either side.

  Wait until they open the door and then jump them, hoping the surprise element will get him past before they have time to react? Or shoot away the padlock now and take his chance on finding an out at the far end of that passage? He dismissed the first option: they would see wood shavings on the flagstoned floor outside the door, which would eliminate the element of surprise.

  Bolan slid the knife back into its ankle-strap sheath, whipped the Beretta from its leather and shoved the muzzle into the gap little more than an inch from the padlock hasp. He pulled the trigger.

  In the confined space of the cellar the noise was deafening. The ringing in Bolan's ears was almost enough to drown the shouts of outrage and the feet scrambling on the stairway.

  He charged the door and it burst open to send him reeling into the passage. Three steps took him to the archway. The leading hood was just appearing around a curve in the stairs, a Combat Master flourished in his right hand. He fired at the same time as the Executioner, but Bolan knew roughly what he was going to see and where; the hood didn't.

  The goon's shot, triggered wild and without considered aim, flew wide and chipped plaster from the side of the arch. Bolan's slug took the hardman in the thigh, just above the right knee, and sent him sprawling headfirst down the remainder of the stairway, yelling with pain. The other two, piling down after him, were forced to leap over his body as they hit the corridor.

  Bolan was already halfway to the door at the far end. He ignored those on each side of the passage, figuring they would lead into small rooms with no exit. He whirled once as he reached the door, while the two hoods were still off balance, and let loose two more shots from the Beretta.

  Once again the underground walls reverberated with the deafening sound of the reports. One of the shots scored, drilling a gorilla through the upper arm. He staggered back with the impact and sat down hard while his companion dropped to one knee and blasted off a single round from a Browning automatic. Bolan felt the wind of the slug as he dived through the doorway. The cellar was the twin of the one where he was imprisoned, only this one was used as a storeroom. Huge stone crocks, wooden cases of liquor and slatted shelves aromatic with the scent of apples and tomatoes lined the walls. Beneath the grating there was an old-fashioned, brassbound steamer trunk with a domed lid.

  Bolan leaped for it and thrust upward against the grating with all his strength. The iron grille fell outward with a heavy clang, and he jumped for the opening as the last hood fired again.

  Something twitched his pant leg, and he felt a jarring blow on his left heel, as he hoisted himself through the gap. A third slug splatted against a bar of the grating, thrumming the ironwork at the moment the Executioner spilled out into the open air.

  By the time Benckendorff's killer had made the steamer trunk and leaned through the opening to channel a deathstream Bolan's way, he was in some shrubbery beneath a plantation of elms, and the bullets shredded harmlessly through the leaves above his head.

  Bolan lay facedown on the frosty ground, making a swift recon of the terrain. The cellar he had escaped from was at the rear of the house; the shrubbery bordered a lawn stretching between the two wings. Light from a window on one of the upper floors glinted on the sloping roof of a greenhouse behind a box hedge at the end of the kitchen wing.

  And on the far side of that wing was the stable block.

  The warrior was determined to get there and do his damnedest to destroy the goatskins and their lethal cargo, however much muscle Benckendorff deployed against him.

  The strength of the East German's forces showed almost at once. Alerted by the gunfire, Benckendorff was already out in the garden on the other side of the building, shouting orders. A door in the wing that Bolan hadn't checked out opened. The light, momentarily printed against the night, was killed and men streamed out across the lawn.

  "Cordon off the house," Benckendorff yelled. "Search every inch of the grounds. This man is dangerous. He must not get away!"

  Bolan thought quickly. Only the hood in the cellar knew roughly where he was, and the guy was pulling himself out through the gap where the grating was. The man was a sitting duck, but if the Executioner blew him away, he would reveal his position to the others. He guessed there were six or seven of them at least, and at the moment he had one thing in his favor.

  Benckendorff would naturally expect the escaped prisoner to be taking it on the lam. The search would therefore be concentrated more on the outskirts of the property; they wouldn't figure Bolan was aiming to return to the outbuildings.

  If he could silence the man from the cellar without firing a shot, he would at least have a head start over the posse. The guy was on his feet and running, heading for the shrubbery. "This way!" he shouted. "I saw the mother…" The words choked in his throat as Bolan leaped for his back, shoving the blunted blade of his knife hard in between the man's ribs. Blood bubbled in his throat and he died, slumping to the ground while Bolan ran.

  "Which way? Where?" a voice shouted from the far side of the lawn. But there was no reply and the Executioner was already halfway to the box hedge sheltering the greenhouse.

  He thought he had it made to the end of the structure, but his silhouette must have shown up momentarily against some reflected brightness because there was a shot, followed at once by two sharp bursts from what sounded like submachine guns and several more single shots from heavy-caliber handguns.

  Crouched behind the box, Bolan was unhurt, but all along the side of the greenhouse rectangular panes disintegrated with an appalling clatter in a thousand gleaming fragments of reflected light. He was through the irregular hole blasted in the side of the building while jagged shards were still dropping from the splintered wooden frame, dodging between stepped shelves of potted plants to race for a door on the far side that he could dimly make out in the indirect illumination.

  The hoods, fanning out across the lawn behind the hedge, fired again, a ragged volley that shattered more glass as Bolan's feet crunched over the shivered splinters already strewing the floor. Then he was wrenching the door open and racing for the vegetable garden through which he had made his original entry. He was hoping to make the far end of the stable block and turn into the yard, but two of the hoods were pounding along the flagstoned pathway that led from the kitchen wing to the doorway in back of the yard, and he was forced to hurl himself to the ground behind a row of brick-built cucumber frames as they opened fire.

  The dual deathstream slammed into the brickwork. Bolan rolled out sideways and lay behind the heaped earth of a bean row, sighting the Beretta on the head of the nearest thug, visible against the reflected glare from the house. He clicked the Beretta into three-shot mode and fired two bursts, rolling again to distance himsel
f from the muzzle-flashes.

  One of the mobsters dropped with a choking cry, his chest smashed open by two of the 9 mm flesh-shredders. Bolan heard the heavy body clatter to the flagstones and a gun skitter away over the hard ground. The second man was hit, but not seriously. Cursing, the hood leaped for the cover of a small wooden shack, getting off a single shot as he moved.

  Bolan saw his shape etched momentarily against the pale wall of the stableyard, and he triggered an isolated round with hairspring reaction. The slug climbed high, coring the gunman's skull and splattering the wall with dark blood. He dropped from sight like a poleaxed bull.

  Snapping bean stalks, the Executioner lurched to his feet. The posse from the far wing was rounding the end of the greenhouse. He ran, bent double, toward the body on the flagstones. A glint of metal nearby revealed the location of the dead man's gun, and Bolan had to have the weapon. He was using the fifteen-round magazine on the Beretta; ten of those rounds had already gone, and he had no spare clip.

  He scooped up the gun — it was a stainless-steel Makarov automatic — and sprinted for the corner of the block. Behind him, the pursuit crashed through the vegetable garden. Two of the hoods stopped, sank to a combat crouch and fired. But Bolan had made it past the corner, and that side of the block, hidden from the reflected glare of the house lights, was in total darkness. He felt the hot breath of one slug fan his neck, but the rest flew wide. He ran on, limping slightly because the heel of one shoe had been shot away when he'd escaped from the cellar. The thugs pounded after him, shouting as they ran. Bullets gouged dust from the wall.

  Panting, the warrior turned the far corner, breath misting in the frosty air as he passed for an instant through the light welling from the windows in the front of the mansion, and plunged into the blackness of the stableyard.

  The cobblestones were icy and he slid wildly, careering between the Citroen and the other cars parked there. The leading hoods reached the entrance to the yard when he was level with the first of the half-open stall doors. Gunfire blazed. Glass tinkled onto the stones. The Citroen moved slightly, settling as the air blew out of a tire.

  Bolan turned, holstering the Beretta and shoving the Makarov into the waistband of his pants. Sprinting as fast as he could in the few yards available, he took a running dive over the lower half of the stable door, hit the straw-covered floor, shoulder-rolled and came up within a couple of yards of the tarped ZIL limo.

  Outside he could hear excited shouts, the milling of feet, orders yelled from a distance by Benckendorff. The East Germans reckoned it was all over. They thought they had him cornered; they wouldn't know that he was wise to the contents of the ZIL's trunk.

  But the warrior hadn't dashed into the yard and dived over that particular half-door by chance. Cornered he might be, but he would worry about that later. Right now he had something important to do.

  He dropped to one knee, groping with his left hand beneath the king-size limousine's rear fenders until he found the cold, curved surface he was seeking. Then, snatching out the Makarov, he pumped three quick shots into the bottom of the ZIL's gas tank. The acrid, pungent odor of the volatile liquid filled the barn and tickled his nostrils as fuel gurgled out of the three holes and spilled across the floor.

  Bolan figured the limo would tote a fifteen- or twenty-gallon tank. And if they were planning to shift the goatskins right away, it would almost certainly be full. He backed off toward the big double doors closing off the barn, waiting for enough gasoline to flood from the tank to leave a mixture of explosive vapor above the sinking level of fuel.

  It was a maneuver he had used before, but this time it was doubly difficult because there was no light inside the barn, and he had to act before the leaking fluid spread across the floor as far as his own feet.

  Breathing hard, he waited. Over the gurgle of fluid he could hear low voices in the yard. The hoods were planning to rush the stables through all three of the open half-doors, firing as they came. He compressed his lips. Let them rush.

  Now.

  He couldn't wait any longer. The floor in front of him was still dry, but the gasoline stink was overpowering. He imagined the thin, dark tide sweeping over the concrete floor toward him — concrete in which, he had noted when he'd seen the place in daylight, there were flints embedded.

  With his back against the pass door, he stretched his right arm down and fired the Russian pistol in a trajectory almost parallel with the floor, bouncing the steel-jacketed slugs off the concrete in ricochets that whined beneath the ZIL and clanged off the heavy metal of its chassis.

  It wasn't until the fifth shot that he struck a spark. Instantly, with a whoomp that blocked his ears and sent him reeling, all of the spilled gasoline ignited. A sheet of flame filled the inner part of the barn and enveloped the ZIL in a roaring maelstrom of fire. Bolan jerked open the pass door. The inrush of cold air boosted the blaze into a searing inferno that boiled upward and set alight the rafters and wooden floor of the hayloft. The straw bales around the remainder of the goatskins flared.

  The limo was consumed. Windows imploded like shrapnel. Metal screamed and buckled. Burning tires belched out choking black smoke. And then the heat exploded the vapor inside the tank, tearing the car apart to send flaming fragments all over the barn.

  Outside there was pandemonium. Bolan could hear Benckendorff's frenzied voice bawling orders. He barreled through the open pass door below waist height, a gun in each hand. There were three men outside, but they didn't know what hit them. He straightened up, spitting death. One of the men keeled over, with blood spouting from the hole in his throat. Then the Executioner was past them and running. He raced down the curving driveway toward the white gateposts, secure in the knowledge that Benckendorff's desire to save his precious narcotics would outweigh any thoughts of catching the intruder who was wrecking his whole campaign of disinformation.

  "Get that car out of there! Pull out that goddamn ZIL! Kill the flames in the loft!" the secret-police chief screamed.

  No way.

  In the stableyard, gasping thugs played useless garden hoses on the holocaust. Others, shielding their eyes with upflung arms, staggered back from the incandescent heat after vain attempts to penetrate the stables. The ZIL couldn't have been hauled out anyway, even if they could reach it, because the pass door was open but the double doors around it were locked and the key was still in the house.

  Bolan looked over his shoulder as he rounded the last curve in the driveway. Scantily dressed women and their clients crowded the brightly lit portico, staring awestruck at the spectacle. Benckendorff was backlit by the glare, waving his arms like a madman. Seconds later the roof of the stables collapsed, and a huge column of flame, spurting red sparks and smoldering fragments of wood, whirled into the night sky.

  Bolan was approaching the deserted gas station when two fire department trucks with sirens shrieking thundered up the road from Aumühle and turned into the driveway. He grinned. They had about as much chance of saving the stable block as Benckendorff had of rescuing his grilled heroin and cocaine.

  There was no sign of Heinrich Alberts or his cab at the gas station. Bolan glanced at his watch. The luminous digital figures told him that it was 8:22. He frowned. Their date had been for eight, but he would have thought the guy could have waited at least a half hour. Maybe he'd had a late fare and hadn't shown yet.

  Bolan waited until 8:30, watching the pulsating glare outline leafless trees around the high ground on which the house was built. When Alberts still hadn't shown, he set off on foot for the S-Bahn station at Aumühle. It was only a half-hour run back into the city, but he couldn't afford to be out of the apartment when Zuta returned. One half of the mission was successfully completed, but the more difficult part was still to come, and he didn't want to alert the woman that he was wise to her before he decided how to handle it.

  Several cars passed him on the way, but none stopped when he tried to thumb a ride. Two hundred yards down the road a white Cadillac was parke
d on the shoulder. He approached it warily, squinting through the dark.

  In the red twilight from the distant fire he made out distinctive trimwork with a monogram on the driver's door. And whitewall tires. Somebody was asleep in the front passenger seat.

  Gripping the Makarov, he jerked open the wide door. In the illumination from the overhead light, he saw the vulture man, the mobster with the broken nose and the scarred face, grinning up at him — a broad, toothless grin, yawning blackly beneath the guy's stubbled chin. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.

  No need to ask questions now about how the silver-haired man would react when the Team tried to put the bite on him. Hansie Schiller could congratulate himself that, in the absence of his boss, he had sent in a deputy.

  Bolan took a quick look around the Cadillac's spacious interior. Nothing of interest. He was withdrawing his head-and shoulders when he saw that the East Germans obviously liked to make doubly sure. There was a bullet hole in the center of the dead man's forehead. Maybe fired from the Makarov the Executioner himself was holding? Maybe not. Just the same, he wiped the butt clear of prints and tossed the gun into the car. You never knew. And he figured one murder rap already hanging over his head was enough.

  He closed the Caddie's door quietly and started running. There was a train in the station waiting to leave. He made it as the automatic doors were hissing shut, sinking into a seat with a gasp of relief.

  The car was empty, but there were people in the next one. Looking idly through the glass windows of the doors separating them, Bolan saw a familiar face, intent above cupped hands shielding a match that was lighting a cigarette.

  It was Ferdie Kraul.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Zuta didn't return to the apartment until ten-thirty. She was dressed like a smart businesswoman — black kid gloves, a classic two-piece in clerical gray, a frilled white blouse. Looking at the artfully, not-quite-concealed curves beneath the suit, meeting those wide dark eyes that were only just beginning to wrinkle at the corners, Bolan found it hard to believe what he had discovered in the house beyond the secret passage.