Dead Man's Tale Read online

  Twenty minutes later, after what seemed an eternity of groping through the blackness, always fearing he would step on a joist that creaked, he was letting himself out through a tiny attic dormer onto a slope of shingled roof.

  The moon was riding high between banks of cloud that had blown up from the south, its milky light streaming down to throw stables, wall, garage and trees into sharp relief, like the cardboard cutouts of a toy farm. Between them, the ground was dense with shadows.

  And somewhere in those shadows, probably, would be at least one of Latta's hardguys with an Ingram. Bolan shrugged. The hell with it. Guards or no guards, he had to move fast.

  If drugs had been planted in the food he'd eaten, they'd have affected him by now, and he'd been careful to select portions from dishes that Latta and Katrina shared. What was more likely — if his hunch that he'd be questioned tonight was correct — was that they intended to surprise him while he slept, perhaps around four o'clock when resistance was supposedly at its lowest ebb. Which could mean any time after the next half hour. Latta could have an alarm set to awaken him at four. He could be awake already. And in either case the Executioner had to be clear of the house before someone discovered his absence and raised an alarm.

  Creeping to the shadowed side of the roof, he found a vent pipe, tested it and lowered himself over the eaves trough.

  The descent was surprisingly easy. The pipe was sturdy, and firmly anchored to the wall. Taking advantage of the excellent grip it offered, Bolan climbed down and rounded the corner of the terrace on stockinged feet.

  Beyond a shallow flight of steps bordered by classical urns, a stretch of moonlit lawn separated him from the shadowed side of the garage.

  The warrior had no time for a recon. The walking silhouette he'd seen from the hallway had been moving in the direction he was traveling now. He had to gamble that the guy's patrol was hourly or half-hourly, in which case he should still have a couple minutes before the gunner was due again. He'd have to risk it.

  Bolan sprang down the steps and padded across the lawn.

  After the darkness of the house the brightness of the moon was like a slap in the face. He felt as vulnerable as a high-wire artist until he gained the shadows lying along one side of the old brick building.

  Nobody called out an alarm. He melted around the corner and tried the garage doors.

  As he had hoped, they weren't locked. Set into the wide outer doors was a smaller pass door that swung open noiselessly as he turned the handle. He slipped through and drew it shut behind him.

  He could make out the dim shapes of four vehicles in the reflected light filtering through the windows: a station wagon, a Cadillac stretch limo and two small foreign cars, one a sedan and the other a convertible. Although the Caddy's vast trunk yawned obediently open as soon as he touched the button, he drew a blank when he felt around for the rope he needed. The carpeted space was completely empty. With the station wagon, however, he had better luck. Lifting the rear door, he found exactly what he was looking for in the space behind the third row of seats: a coil of towing rope about twelve feet long, with a small iron grappling hook spliced onto one end.

  Easing the rope from beneath the roll of tools, Bolan wound it around his waist beneath his jacket. Then he untied the shoes from around his neck and put them on. He was ready to go.

  For a moment he toyed with the idea of trying to find out from the license plates of the cars what state he was in. But there wasn't enough light to read them, and the letters and figures were unfamiliar to his touch. He was also aware that he was running out of time: the stable clock had chimed four times several minutes ago.

  He stole back to the garage door, eased it open... and remained rigid, his hand on the latch.

  Four yards away, a man stood with his back to the garage, looking up at the house. Holding his breath, Bolan followed the direction of his gaze. All along the mellow, ivy-covered facade and the slope of shingles above, the dark windows shone with the reflected light of the moon.

  All except one.

  Of the four attic dormers piercing the roof, one gaped open. In the silver light that streamed down from the sky and bathed every imperfection in the brickwork, the window Bolan had inadvertently left open stood out significantly.

  The guard stood there several seconds longer. And then, shifting the Ingram so that his right hand clutched the pistol grip, he turned slowly to scrutinize the moonlit gardens.

  Luckily for the Executioner, the moon had moved far enough since he'd entered the garage for the shadow of the gable to fall across the doors. He would have to rely on the contrast of light and shade to hide the fact that the door was half open, since he didn't have a chance to close it now.

  The guard's eyes swept past the garage and on toward the corner of the house. Then, apparently coming to a decision, the man strode away toward the front entrance. As he walked, he unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke quietly into it.

  As soon as the gunner was out of sight, Bolan was through the doorway and sprinting in the other direction. The guard could be making a duty call-in, but it was more likely that he was reporting the open window — either to the head of security or to Latta himself. In which case the Executioner's absence would be discovered in a matter of seconds.

  Treading silently on rubber soles, the warrior hurried past the stables and skirted the wall enclosing the garden. A sweep of graveled driveway and a strip of lawn separated him from the long expanse of the parkland. He waited, cursing the haste that had caused him to leave that window open, until the moon sailed behind a cloud bank. Then he dashed across.

  The fine stones crunched loudly beneath his feet, but he was past caring now whether people heard him or not — reaching the fence was the only thing that mattered. He raced toward the trees near the boundary of the estate.

  Bolan had decided to make his attempt where the electric wires were nearest the house, reasoning that the highest concentration of guards would probably be posted on the other side, where the fence was the farthest away.

  It was a lucky choice, now that every second turned out to be vital. He had two hundred yards to go, and already, glancing over his shoulder, he saw that lights had come on behind the main doors of the house.

  When he was thirty yards from the fence, the warrior dropped to the ground and pressed his face to the damp grass. He'd seen the dim figure of a guard running across an open area on the far side of the shrubbery. The man had obviously been called up to the house.

  Seconds later the warrior was standing beneath a tall cedar tree just inside the chain-link fence. He took the strips of the doctored meat from his pocket and uncoiled the rope from around his waist. Then, playing out about six feet of the end with the hook attached, he looped the rest over his wrist and began whirling the free end around his head.

  As Bolan stared up at the dark mass of the tree, trying to choose a suitable branch to aim for, he heard a slight noise on his flank.

  One of the guards stood at the edge of the shrubbery with his Ingram raised to fire.

  Bolan's fighter reflexes saved his life. Lightning-fast, he increased the length of the rope and dropped his wrist. The heavy iron hook altered its trajectory, whistling through the air in a slight arc to smash into the side of the gunman's head.

  The guard stiffened, dropped his weapon and crashed back among the bushes.

  Bolan stole a glance over his shoulder. Windows blazed with light all along the upper floor of the house. At any moment his empty room would be discovered.

  He retrieved the Ingram and then whirled the rope above his head, casting upward for a tangle of boughs that was visible about sixteen feet from the ground. On the third attempt, the hook caught firmly enough for the rope to take his weight. He lobbed the pieces of drugged meat over the fence into the space between the wire and the outer wall.

  He didn't see the dogs, but they were on the stuff in an instant, a blur of black-and-tan bodies snarling and snuffling in the dark as the
y fought over the meat.

  Bolan was halfway up the rope, swinging like a pendulum, before the Dobermans had swallowed the food. As they staggered and sank to the ground, he rocketed the rope, Tarzanlike, to its zenith and let go as he rose toward the electrified fence.

  He felt a rush of air against his face, followed by a jarring impact that shook every bone in his body. He went into a shoulder roll as he landed and came up in a combat crouch... but for the moment he was safe. He'd fallen in the center of the cleared strip between the fence and the wall.

  As he rose to his full height, the moon swam out from behind the cloud bank, flooding the area with light. At the same time he heard a clamor of voices burst from the house. They had realized that the bird had flown.

  Time for a swift recon.

  Fifty yards to his left, where the wire fence crossed the main driveway by means of a steel grid, was a gate house. The outer gates were housed in an arch piercing the building, so there was no hope of escape that way. As he watched, floodlight blazed into life above the arch. Others glowed and then dazzled at intervals around the perimeter.

  Bolan turned to the right... and tensed.

  A third Doberman stared at him over the prostrate bodies of its kennel mates. Bolan took one look at the murderous glare of its eyes and exploded into action.

  He tossed the Ingram over the wall, wrenched off his jacket and rushed toward the dog uttering a growl that he hoped would sound like a snarl of rage. For an instant the animal, taken by surprise, backed off with its hackles raised. And in that moment the warrior swerved aside and leaped for the wall.

  He flung up the jacket, which caught miraculously on a shard of broken glass that glittered along the top of the brickwork, grabbed the material and swung his feet clear as the guard dog snapped at his heels.

  Seconds later he had hauled himself up and dropped soundlessly to a stretch of grass on the far side. Bolan saw a white road that traversed a dream landscape of moonlit woods and fields. He picked up the Ingram and started to run as the Doberman on the other side of the wall began to bark furiously.

  The road was featureless. No trees or bushes separated the soft shoulder from farmland on which some crop was only just showing above the furrowed earth. The nearest stand of trees was a quarter of a mile away.

  An engine revved loudly and gravel scattered as a car sped down the estate's driveway and out the main gate. Powerful headlights silhouetted Bolan's running figure. The vehicle would be on him in seconds.

  The Executioner turned aside and jumped into a low drainage ditch at the side of the road. Panting, he lay prone and pulled out the Ingram's telescopic metal stock. He aimed at the oncoming vehicle.

  The small convertible was traveling fast with the top down. As far as Bolan could see, the vehicle contained three men. He guessed they weren't wise to the fact that he'd taken a weapon from one of their confederates because one gunner was standing up beside the driver, resting his submachine gun on top of the windshield, and the third man sat on the top of the trunk with his feet on the rear seat.

  An instant before they opened fire, Bolan heard a second car scream out of the gates and take off down the road in the other direction.

  Flame spit from the muzzle of the gun propped on the windshield; at the same time Bolan squeezed his trigger. The silenced Ingram shuddered in his grasp as a burst of .45-caliber ACP rounds snorted out the grooved suppressor to shatter the convertible's headlights.

  A volley of slugs peppered the earth around the warrior. He let loose with another burst, watching the windshield erupt in a silver fountain and the guy above it spin backward into the road with out flung arms.

  The driver braked, wrenching the car around with shrieking tires, and the rear gunner ducked out of sight, flaming a long burst at the ditch. But the Executioner had hosed a deathstream at the guy behind the wheel, blowing him away.

  The car crashed into the ditch and flipped over onto its side, stalling the engine. Alloy spokes glinted in the wan light as a rear wheel turned slowly to a halt beneath the moon.

  The rear gunner had been thrown clear and lay sprawled in the road, half hidden by the capsized convertible. His Ingram was ten feet away.

  Crawling swiftly on hands and knees he made a grab for it, but Bolan leaned sideways to get a wider angle on the target and hammered out a long burst, catching the guy before he reached his goal.

  The stream of flesh-shredders didn't kill the gunner, but the impact knocked him over backward, screaming. He rolled into the ditch on the other side of the road and disappeared.

  The Executioner squeezed the Ingram's trigger again, hoping to keep the man's head down, and heard nothing but a hollow click. He was out of ammunition.

  There would be ammo left in the gunners' weapon, but one was underneath the car and the other thirty yards away in the middle of the road. Should he take a chance and race back to retrieve it?

  No way. Drawn by the sound of protesting tires and the yell of the wounded gunner in the ditch, reinforcements on foot were crowding out of the gateway of the estate and running in his direction. There was a chance, too, that the hardguy he hit would possess a handgun.

  Bolan got to his feet and took off toward the woods.

  He had guessed right. Ten paces from his hiding place, he heard the deep-throated reports of a heavy-caliber revolver. A slug whined off a stone in the road, followed by another that whistled dangerously close to Bolan's ear. He tossed away the useless Ingram and poured on as much speed as his muscles could supply, weaving from side to side as he powered effortlessly away from the immobilized shooter.

  Four more shots rang out, and then only the more distant sounds of pursuit, including the exhaust blare of two more vehicles being gunned to the maximum.

  Beyond the woods the road dipped and forked left, right across a more undulating landscape. There were no direction signs where the road branched.

  Bolan glanced hastily each way. He had hoped at first — even when they discovered he was missing — that his captors wouldn't know whether he'd escaped hours ago or only recently. The dogs and the roadside battle had killed that one. They knew he couldn't have gotten far; they didn't need to waste time and manpower searching beyond the immediate vicinity of the estate.

  Put it another way: he had to find a place to hide. Fast.

  He took the left-hand fork. A mile away, on top of a rise, the long, low outbuildings of a farm bulked against the moonlit sky. It was the obvious place for his pursuers to look — so he'd go to ground before he made it that far.

  Fifty yards ahead, a gate led into a large field surrounded with hedgerows, and between the gate and the road was a cattle grid — an iron grille placed over a depression in the ground to deter livestock from straying off their owner's property.

  With great effort Bolan pried up the heavy grid, dropped into the space below it and lowered it cautiously back into place.

  For what seemed like many hours, with the sweat drying cold on his body, he lay there with his face pressed close to the musty earth. Several cars swept past two or three times, and once a spotlight moved slowly along the hedgerow as a vehicle ground past in low gear. Bars of illumination fingered the dark in the Executioner's self-chosen prison, fanning out over a slope of mud to reveal a tuft of blanched leaves, a spider scurrying, the gluey end of a worm. Sometime later he heard the sounds of footsteps hurrying by. Finally all was quiet.

  Bolan placed his shoulders beneath the grille and pushed it up. He stood, stretched and surveyed the terrain. The moon had sunk below the horizon, and the meadows lay spread out beneath the dark sky as far as he could see. But however far the vehicular pursuit had ranged, he was sure Latta would've left sentries in the immediate vicinity of the house. To keep to the road would be suicidal: he knew he had to travel across country until it was safe enough to hitch a ride to the nearest town.

  He swung over the gate and hurried away from the road along the boundary of the field. In the distance he heard a single chime stru
ck from the clock above Latta's stables.

  Five-thirty.

  Half a mile farther he reached a line of trees stretching away to the east, where a faint lightening of the sky told him dawn wasn't far off. Ten minutes later he was standing on top of a bank above a narrow country lane.

  He looked left and right along the ghostly strip of road, but could see no signs of his pursuers. He plunged down the bank and set off at a trot in the direction that seemed farthest from the Latta property, still heading east.

  Soon he saw lights flick on in a cottage on the far side of a field. A rooster crowed and a dog barked in the distance. Far away across the dark countryside a low, wide structure was silhouetted against the paling sky. It looked like an overpass carrying a state highway above the flat-land; and indeed when Bolan stopped he could hear the hum of traffic and make out the moving blurs of cars and trucks above the concrete supports.

  A little later, the lane curved around a stand of willows and he came to a T-shaped intersection. It was quite light by now, and against the far hedge — at last — he could make out a road sign.

  Bolan halted. For a moment he stared at the sign. The directions were in an unfamiliar white lettering on an enameled blue background. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open in disbelief.

  The right-hand board said Houdemelle 15 km. The one on the left announced Couette 9 km. And above this was a separate, rectangular sign, a green one on which white characters spelled out the legend:

  Autoroute E.9: Luxembourg-Liege — 2000 m

  Bolan shook his head, amazed. Small wonder he'd found "foreign" automobiles in Latta's garage, with unfamiliar license plates. No surprise that he couldn't place the landscape.

  Vermont or Wisconsin, hell! Far from spiriting him to a distant state in the Union, the kidnappers had flown him clear across the Atlantic and he was now in the southeast corner of Belgium.