Season of Slaughter Read online

  The winos Bolan had seen, had eyes that looked around in terror at a world that had proved too big, too terrible, for them to deal with.

  The man whose eyes Bolan looked into from a distance had a look that was sharp and alert. There was fire going on inside the brain controlling the raptor-like stare. This wasn’t some human version of a rabbit twitching in response for threats, but a stationary predator. He lay in wait, a harmless log to trip over, just a piece of human driftwood until you stumbled too close, and then the strike came.

  Bolan slung the AWC over his shoulder and reached down for his crossbow. He wasn’t going to start shooting. Not yet.

  Getting close to the enemy, finding out his plans, was what was needed.

  The Barnett crossbow gave a soft, almost musical thrum as it launched its grapnel bolt, loops of nylon rope hissing from a puddle at Bolan’s foot until the fiberglass-and-steel shaft snagged the other roof. The force of the bolt launch primed a mechanism inside the grapnel so that as soon as the device struck the subtly curved rooftop, it sprang open.

  Bolan gave a sharp tug, pulling the black-and-silver grapnel back against a piece of off-white painted steel support ribbing. There was a dull clank in the distance and the nylon rope resisted his pull. Bolan gave another sharp tug, putting his back into it. He didn’t want the grapnel coming loose while he was sixty feet above the ground, dangling over a pair of men with submachine guns.

  Satisfied that the grapnel and the rope would hold his weight, Bolan turned and tied off the end, making sure there was no slack. He spent one last moment checking his gear. He decided to leave behind the sniper rifle. It would be too long and ungainly in the close quarters of the warehouse. Instead he gave his Heckler & Koch MP-5-K machine pistol, a deadly little weapon in its own right, a check. With two magazines clamped together, and the sling looped over his head and under his right arm, he had swift access to the gun, and excellent recoil control with a sharp push against the shoulder strap and a tight grip on both pistol grips. Bolan let the little subgun dangle, withdrew a leather strop and wrapped the nylon cord with it, kicking off from the roof edge.

  THE WAREHOUSE ROOF was a little treacherous, slick from evening mist, but the treaded black-rubber soles of Bolan’s combat boots helped him find traction on the curved surface while his hands were chewed on by rusted-out metal and paint. He would grab for a handhold, and come away with rust gouged into his calloused fingers and palms. More than once, a sliver of steel would make him jerk back his grip in midstep.

  The slip would bring him to his knees, and he clenched up, holding against a fatal drop. Finally he reached the skylight in the center of the roof. He crouched, peering through the window, keeping his face back far enough to avoid lighting it up from below. Amber light spilled in the center of the half-empty storage area.

  There were three men inside and, out of the shadows, like the enormous, droopy legs of a monstrous tarantula, he could see two rotors of a helicopter in the spill of light from hanging ceiling fixtures. From the angles of the rotors, Bolan recognized a Black Hawk UH-60. While there were plenty of places in Washington, D.C., where military equipment was kept, this wasn’t on the official rolls.

  This wasn’t even a part of the black operations rolls, according to Aaron Kurtzman and the cybercrew back at Stony Man Farm. A helicopter, seen picking up the two murderers of the Dulles massacre, was spotted setting down in this area. Only by the grace of Hal Brognola’s stalling and Kurtzman’s lightning-fast research abilities were the Stony Man warriors able to pin down the helicopter’s likely location. It had taken an hour of searching the warehouse district to get the exact location, and another half hour of climbing and crawling, but Bolan was now in striking distance.

  He took a loop of duct tape and ran it along one of the panes in the skylight, quickly fashioning a handle. With his free hand, he pulled a glass-cutter from his battle harness and carved free a rough half circle, tall and wide enough for his six-foot-three, two-hundred-three pound frame. Slithering, Bolan braced himself on the window ledge with his thighs until his arms stretched to the catwalk below. Firmly grabbing the rail, he was able to pull himself forward, slinking down onto the catwalk gently and under control. One hand braced on the rail, the other gripping the catwalk’s grille for support, his knee came down while his foot stayed hooked in the windowpane.

  Finally he reached the end of the walkway, weight coming down slowly and silently. The men below didn’t even notice.

  Bolan fisted the little MP-5-K, crouching and keeping watch on the half-empty warehouse. The Black Hawk was in the process of being spray-painted, new stencils giving tail markings. There were no numbers identified on the black chopper at Dulles, and as far as Bolan could see on this setup, black numbers were being painted onto the now red-and-white helicopter. It took a few seconds for the Executioner to recognize the Coast Guard lookalike.

  A short, lithe woman walked briskly out of an office. She had dark black hair and tanned skin, but from her aviator glasses, Bolan couldn’t make out her nationality. Not at that distance.

  The woman stopped about ten feet from the helicopter. “What’s keeping you so long?”

  “We ran out of paint, ma’am,” one of the workmen said.

  “Did you send someone for more paint? Bad enough I had to lay up here. At least no one would notice a Coast Guard chopper flying along the Potomac. Right away, that is.”

  “But…Harpy…”

  “What but?” the woman snapped. She took a fistful of coveralls in her hand and Bolan could almost smell the fear coming off the poor guy.

  “I’ll get someone on it.”

  Harpy. Bolan couldn’t place the name right off the top of his head, but it seemed familiar to him. He watched as she let the worker go and fished out a cell phone from her pocket, flipping it open.

  Bolan quickly took an opportunity. He reached into his battle harness and pulled out an unformatted cell phone, set up by Gadgets and turned it on. A quick tap of a few keys and the phone began searching, its internal processor invisibly and silently humming to capture and clone the signal of Harpy’s phone.

  Bolan pocketed the phone and pulled out his ranged microphone, aiming it toward the pilot as she spoke. The minimike would only be able to pick up her half of the conversation, but it was better than nothing. Plus, he would be able to record that half of the conversation on the MP3 pod in his harness’s belt pouch.

  “What kind of operation did you leave me with here, DeeDee?” Harpy growled.

  Bolan noted the name.

  “These rotten-brained idiots don’t even have enough paint for the helicopter. Did you not tell them I was coming?”

  Harpy untensed, letting her head roll back. A sigh escaped her full lips and she turned, aviator glasses hiding her eyes behind ribbons of distorted reflection.

  “I know these are just local help you got, but—” Harpy’s voice cut off. Her head turned a moment and she slowly began to move in a circle.

  Bolan felt a chill go through him. He checked the cell phone from his pocket, shifting his gaze between the little phone and the black-haired pilot. The cell had completed the cloning process and he flipped it open, listening in.

  “…someone has broken in on the line. Your signal’s been cloned!” a woman’s voice with an Irish lilt confirmed.

  Harpy snapped her telephone shut and started for the office.

  Bolan stuffed the microphone and the cell into his cargo pants’ pocket and swept up the MP-5-K. He held his fire, presuming that he could avoid the firefight for a few minutes. He needed more hard intel.

  “We’ve got an intruder! Forget the paint!” Harpy shouted.

  Bolan cursed and started back toward the skylight. He reached for his throat mike to transmit to Able Team, but all he heard was the telltale sign of electronic countermeasures jamming. He checked back at Harpy’s silhouette in the office door. She was holding a massive collection of cylinders.

  “Take a good long look at our bird, a
sshole!” she shouted.

  The Executioner recognized the brutal outline of an MM-1 grenade launcher and turned his MP-5-K toward Harpy. The pilot beat him to the shot, spraying the Black Hawk with a trio of 40 mm grenades before ducking back into the office, avoiding Bolan’s Parabellum spray.

  Metal bulged, puffed out and finally burst apart in a volcano of steel and ceramic. A rotor twisted upward, knifing through the catwalk that Bolan stood on, sheering through the steel before it exploded into a hundred shards. The soldier spun, trying to escape as the tail boom of the Black Hawk folded upward from the concussive force that smashed it apart. Again, the catwalk came under a hammering assault, metal tearing from the ceiling and walls.

  The long steel grille walkway began to fall away from the ceiling.

  Bolan tried to grab a section of railing, but it twisted and wrenched out of his hand.

  Gravity took hold of the Executioner as he tumbled out of control to the flaming rubble-strewn floor below.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz’s blood ran cold when he heard the first howl of electronic jamming across his communications setup. He pushed open the door of the van, diving out of the driver’s seat. “Striker’s in trouble!”

  Rosario Blancanales was already drawing the micro-Uzi SMG from under his denim jacket, and the pair of them raced toward the warehouse. David Kowalski was slipping out of the van and hot on their heels when Schwarz held up a hand to him.

  “Get behind the wheel! We’re going to need a fast extraction!” Schwarz ordered.

  The blacksuit stopped, the longing in his face to run and help out as evident as if someone had carved it into his flesh. He turned and piled behind the steering wheel, firing up the engine.

  “Good man,” Schwarz said, spinning to get back onto Blancanales’s heels.

  In the distance, the worst sound that Schwarz anticipated suddenly filled the air, the thunder of explosions ripping from the warehouse that Bolan had entered. The Able Team electronics genius put down his head and dug in, legs kicking harder to launch himself to his friend’s aid when Blancanales snapped out one hand to grab him aside.

  A spray of gunfire filled the air just where Schwarz would have been, the guards disguised as winos opening fire on the two men rushing toward them.

  Firing one-handed, Blancanales pumped out a trio of short bursts, doing nothing more than keeping their heads down, but giving himself and Schwarz the opportunity to dive for cover. More bullets sliced the air, punching out chunks of stone and brick above their heads.

  “What the hell is going on in there?” Blancanales asked.

  “I know Striker didn’t start blowing up shit,” Schwarz replied. “They must be going scorched earth on us.”

  “I hate it when they do that.” Blancanales’s voice grated as he fed a fresh magazine into his Uzi. “Low or high?”

  “I’ll go low. Your old knees can’t take all this banging off the pavement,” Schwarz decided.

  “On three. Three!”

  Blancanales swung up, Schwarz kicking out flat, both their machine pistols tracking the pair of disguised guards as they tried to flank the Able Team pair. Parabellum slugs flew in a furious storm, deadly leaden hail burning through chests, bellies and thighs in a wave of devastation that left no doubt the enemy gunmen were out of this fight.

  Except, both enemy guards were crying out in agony, clutching shattered and torn thighs, machine pistols dropped and forgotten. Blancanales grimaced, then nodded to Schwarz.

  These men were wearing body armor. Only by the fact that Schwarz had aimed for lower belly and upper leg shots had they managed to knock the fight out of their adversaries. Schwarz gave a sharp whistle and a wild wave of his arm toward the van.

  “Prisoners,” Blancanales said.

  “You slap, tag and bag them, I’m going to check on Striker,” Schwarz ordered, getting up off the concrete and moving toward the door of the warehouse. He reloaded on the run, letting his nearly emptied magazine go spinning away through momentum.

  Reaching a doorway he spotted on the side of the warehouse, he was forced to drop down behind the trio of concrete steps as guards from the other side of the warehouse opened fire. Bullets sent chips of stone flying and raining into Schwarz’s tousled hair, one slug bouncing and shrieking past his ear.

  Survival reflex demanded that the Able Team warrior curl up and fall back, but experience told him otherwise. Reaching into one of his pockets, he pulled out a small black disk the size and shape of a high-tech hockey puck, except for some flat panel switches built into the rim. Digging his thumb in, he clicked the disk on and hung his arm back. The minute the initial storm of gunfire dissipated, Schwarz let loose with the disk.

  The plastic flash-bang grenade sailed and landed between the two men, who didn’t recognize it for what it was until it was too late. The thunderbolt of its detonation sent the pair tumbling to the ground. Bounding to his feet, Schwarz took aim at the pair and blasted out their knees in single-shot mode, burning off only five shots to keep them anchored and out of the fight.

  Schwarz grabbed the door handle, but jerked his hand away when the searing heat bit at his nerve endings. Dropping back down to the bottom of the steps, he swung up his MAC-10 and blasted the door handle. Chunks of metal spilled to the ground and he turned, firing at the thick hinges, blasting them apart with his second magazine, then stepped out of the way of the falling door.

  The hot breath of a hellish inferno washed over Schwarz.

  THE CATWALK SLICED its way toward the floor and Bolan knew that if he didn’t fall just right, he’d be crushed under tangled steel. The flames and the bone-breaking force of dropping nearly forty-five feet were matters he’d come to later if he managed to survive being guillotined and mangled by a metric ton of mangled metal. With a powerful kick of his legs, the Executioner let go of the catwalk.

  He threw his arms out ahead of him, like Superman taking to flight, hands flat as knives to cut down the resistance of his forward motion, while making himself as wide and glider-like as possible to catch the air beneath him. It was a trick he’d learned in parachute school, controlling a fall by making the surface of the body into a sail. It was negligible lift, but lift nonetheless, and he sailed at least fifteen feet from the catwalk when he tucked himself in tight and hit the ground shoulders first, rolling onto his back.

  The impact with the concrete floor was body-jarring, shaking him to the core, and he could already feel the sheet of bruised skin and muscle swelling along his back. He was alive, though, and his spine was in one piece. Bolan could tell because he could feel the hot lick of flame burning at his cargo pants, and the wicked cut from a piece of twisted metal on his leg.

  The Executioner hauled himself to his feet, looking at the office where Harpy had disappeared. She was busy cutting out through the opposite entrance. Bolan swung up his machine pistol and fired off a short burst through the window, smashing it apart before the weapon choked. Bolan looked down and saw that the magazine tube had been dented on impact with the floor. Ripping the magazine free, Bolan fed the other sidesaddle-clipped magazine into the well. He vaulted through the blasted-out window, and dropped to the ground as pistol fire cracked and bucked.

  Flames roared behind him, breaking more glass. Bolan scanned around and saw that empty paint canisters and spilled paint were burning. He was glad there wasn’t more flammable liquid in the warehouse when he caught something out of the corner of his eye.

  A five-foot-tall, twelve-foot-long yellow cylinder to one side of the wreckage of the helicopter. The word “flammable” in foot-high letters on the side, Bolan realized that he was staring at hundreds of gallons of aviation fuel.

  “Striker to Able! Striker to Able! Can you read me?” Bolan shouted into his throat mike.

  The Executioner looked back and realized that there was a possibility that his Stony Man partners would come charging in at any moment to give him backup. If the jamming would only quit, he could dissuade h
is friends from coming inside.

  A door suddenly opened across the way, a hot wind stirring up as the overheated air finally had someplace to escape. A shadow in the doorway had ducked free of the initial flaming release.

  Bolan opened fire, stitching the doorjamb with precision, looking to make his allies in Able Team pull back. He knew, though, that the Stony Man warriors wouldn’t be held at bay by mere gunfire for long. He wished he could get his message across in some way. He noticed the desktop. A pen and paper. And a rubber band.

  AS SCHWARZ was beginning to go through the doorway into the inferno, a blast of machine-gun fire chopped into the doorjamb. Reflex tugged him out of the way just in time as bullets hammered the steel frame of the entranceway. Ducking, he brought up his MAC-10 and glanced over his shoulder. The heat from the doorway was making his covered skin drenched and his exposed face prickle as it dried out.

  He crouched in a half retreat, looking back as Blancanales hung off the side of the Able Team van, driven by Kowalski.

  Schwarz held up one hand and the van rolled to a slow stop, twenty feet from the doorway.

  “I’m taking fire from inside,” Schwarz called.

  “Fire, smoke, hot air, the whole works,” Blancanales called back, dropping from the sliding panel door and rushing over to join his partner, SMG drawn.

  Suddenly a curved chunk of metal clattered noisily through the opened doorway. Schwarz and Blancanales pulled back, ready to dive away from a grenade blast when they recognized the curved shape of an MP-5 magazine. A piece of paper had been wrapped around it with a rubber band and Blancanales quickly plucked it up, pulling the note free.

  “‘Aviation fuel set to blow. I’m out the other side. Striker,’” Blancanales read.

  “Aw, hell,” Schwarz cursed. “Into the van!”

  Blancanales didn’t have to be told twice, and the two Able Team veterans raced for the side of the van. Kowalski had it in reverse, slowly coasting until the two men clambered on board.