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  The band was grinding to a halt, only the bass player still thrashing at his instrument, as they gradually became aware of the altercation. The mosh pit had emptied, and an ever-widening space was growing around the stage as Ross, Goldman and Signella moved across the floor. The spray of fire that Ross sent at the open door as Bolan dived out was the final nail in the band’s coffin. With just the bass now filling the room, the staccato sound of the exploding Beretta cut through the darkened room, spreading fear and panic to those clubbers who had not, as yet, realized that something was wrong.

  At the sound of this final blast, pandemonium cut loose. The bassist stopped playing, dropped his instrument as he struggled out of the strap and dived for the back of the stage. His fellow band members had already leaped for cover. Those clubbers who were trapped between the gunman and the entrance huddled against the back wall, opposite the stage. Those up in the bar area near the entrance were trying desperately to get out through the double doors, falling over one another in panic. Against their tide, the bouncers from the door were trying to fight their way in, to see what was happening. They yelled into their headsets, wondering where their opposite numbers were within the club.

  Which was exactly what Bolan was wondering as the mercenaries cut a swath toward the exit. He also wondered how they planned to get past the gridlock that was the sole exit.

  6

  Errol Ross ejected the empty clip from the Beretta, reached smoothly and swiftly into his pocket, then rammed home a full clip. The action was quick and efficient, practiced without his even looking. His attention was focused on the darkened interior of the club. There was a little illumination from the stage, and a further source from the open door of the back room. He was able to see that the clubbers left in the dance area were huddled against the wall, trying to stay clear of his covering fire.

  Among them was the man who had tried to take Signella.

  Dammit, who the hell was he? Ross wondered. His eyes narrowed as he tried to pierce the gloom by sheer force of will. The way the man had spoken to them suggested that he was after Signella for the same thing. So what branch of intelligence or the Justice Department did he work for? Was he even working for the U.S.? If they were freelancing, then so, too, could he. It was even possible that they had both been hired by the same department. These people were so good at keeping things hidden, laying down smoke screens, that it was entirely possible that they would set two lots of operatives at each other’s throats to try to increase the competition, get the job done faster.

  No wonder they were all so damned paranoid.

  So paranoid that he was sure he could see the man moving in the shadows, getting closer.

  BOLAN USED THE COVER of the darkness to move forward. He kept low, the Desert Eagle in one hand, the other probing in front of him. He kept whispering “Keep calm, don’t worry, let me through” in French as he moved. He doubted that the terrified clubbers could make out what he was saying, much less understand, but he was desperate to avoid a situation where some panicked and opened up the way for a massacre. He could see the shape of Ross, standing at the foot of the shallow stairs leading up to the bar area, the main site of congestion. But the man’s face was in darkness. Bolan watched him eject the clip and replace it. One clear shot could have taken out the merc at this point, but Bolan wanted both Ross and Goldman alive. Taking out one may panic the other into killing Signella.

  “JIMMY, WHAT’S GOING ON up there?” Ross yelled over his shoulder.

  “Gridlock.” Goldman returned with the anger boiling over into his voice. “And don’t you try anything or else I’ll kill you,” he added in a quieter voice to Signella.

  The unarmed Sicilian could see the gleam in Goldman’s eye that told him the redhead meant business. It also told him this would be a stupid place for him to die.

  “Do something,” Ross screamed.

  The whole thing had gone wrong. Their intention had been to wait while Signella got drunk with his whore, follow them out of the club, then take him. They could spirit him away for questioning, then recover the target and get out. It was simple.

  But this? Stuck in a darkened club with another agent firing at them, unable to get out of the place because of the crush of people, and liable to lose Signella either to a bullet or the crowds. Why the hell had this other guy turned up now? Ross wondered. They’d had no choice but to step in. They couldn’t let Signella be taken from under their noses.

  “Jimmy, just shoot your way out,” Ross shouted.

  “If I could, I would,” Goldman returned. “But I’d need an M-60 to cut through this.”

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING, man?” the dreadlocked doorman yelled into his headset. From where they were, on the outside of the club, it was almost impossible to hear the gunshots over the throb of the band and the noise from the streets. All he and his partner knew was that suddenly there was a rush from the inside, and people were spilling out, colliding with those who wanted to enter, or were just hanging out in the streets. They had exchanged puzzled glances and asked for information from inside. There were two other security men working the inside, apart from Charlie on the back-room door. Charlie’s mike seemed to have gone dead, and in the rush the other security guards were too busy to answer immediately.

  And then the band had ceased to play, and the chatter of sporadic gunfire could be heard.

  “Shit! We’ve got to get the doors clear,” the bald doorman yelled, his impassive face cracking for the first time that evening.

  “How?”

  “Kick them back if you have to, so we can get these open,” his partner replied, using his muscle to push against the seething, yet jammed, throng of humanity in the doorway.

  If the two doormen could actually get into the club, then clearing the jam would be relatively simple. They were guarding two doors built into the larger double doors of the old factory, in much the same way that many nineteenth-century factories and warehouses had large doors for delivery, but smaller doors inset for staff and workers to use. The doors were solid enough, and were secured by massive old iron bolts that slipped into the floor at the bottom, and the stone door lintel at the top. To slip these bolts and open the doors, relieving the crush, was—in theory—the work of seconds.

  Not so easy when a mass of panicking customers were pushing their way out.

  “Back! Just get back and everything will be fine,” the guard yelled in a tone that suggested otherwise, all the while kicking his way into the mass. On the other side, his partner did likewise. He wasn’t paid to hurt the clubbers, but he knew that if they couldn’t free the gridlock, then people would get crushed, and who knew how many would get killed if the shooting inside continued. He didn’t want to think about the gunfire, as he knew that he and the other security men were unarmed.

  On each side of the door, now, they had made enough space for themselves to move freely. Each man kicked up the floor bolt, their heavy shoes still not thick enough to stop the iron bolts from jarring the bones in their feet. Pain they could ignore under the circumstances, as adrenaline shot through their veins.

  In unison, like a well-oiled machine, they reached up for the bolts jammed into the stone lintel, the scrape of the little-used device making it hard to move the bolts. Both men swore as they maneuvered the metal from side to side, cursing the club owners who wouldn’t spare a little oil for these eventualities.

  Dreadlocks moved his bolt first, letting it drop and putting his shoulder to the crowd behind him as he tried to pull the door, pushing them backward to make room for the sweep of the massive wooden door. He knew that those directly behind would see what he was doing and be thankful. They weren’t the problem. It was those a little farther back who were causing the obstruction, still pushing forward and trying to escape. Sweat poured off him as he pushed back, feeling the heaving mass of people to his rear.

  The bald doorman was only a fraction of a second behind him, and although the night air from the Marseilles street beyond was humid
and warm, it was still cooler than the rank aura in the club’s bar area. The air tasted sweet to those in the front of the crush, who pushed their way through the ever-widening gap.

  The doormen got the doors back as far as they would go, and the trickle into the street turned into a flood as clubbers fell over themselves to get out, and away from the shooting. The two security men were prevented from getting farther into the club by the sudden, lemminglike exodus as the flow of traffic pinned them to the walls.

  “ERROL, HEADS UP. Something’s happening,” Goldman yelled as the lights from the street outside became visible from inside the club.

  Signella saw Ross look over his shoulder. “What the—”

  The gap became wider, and people stared to move. It was at this moment that Goldman looked backward, to try to locate his partner.

  Signella—all the earlier alcoholic muzziness driven from his system by fear and the will to survive—noticed that Goldman’s attention was momentarily taken away from him. They seemed to want him alive. Would they actually take him out? If he stayed, they certainly would.

  Time to play percentages.

  Before Goldman had a chance to react, Signella brought up his left elbow so that it connected with the redhead’s arm, jerking the Smith & Wesson revolver toward the ceiling. At the same time, he forearm-punched the woman in front of him, making her stumble to one side. The small gap this left was all he needed. Elbows and forearms carving a path through the clubbers in front of him, moving easier as the flow increased and he was able to use its momentum, Signella was lost in the dingy crowd of featureless heads and shoulders before Goldman had a chance to locate him.

  BOLAN WAS RELIEVED when the shooting stopped. At least the two mercs didn’t want to shoot their way through. No need now that the gridlock was freed, but he never knew with such loose cannons.

  He knew that Signella had broken from them, and they were too far in front of Bolan. So the chances of Signella being within his view were pretty slim. The best he could hope for was to follow Ross and Goldman, and hope that they would lead him in the right direction. Always assuming that they didn’t want to just blow him away.

  Keeping track of them was going to be difficult. The sight of the double doors opening, the crowds beginning to move, and Ross disappearing into the throng had given the huddled clubbers the impetus to make a move of their own, and they, too, were rushing for the exit—with Bolan in the middle of them, trying to keep Ross and Goldman in sight.

  Bolan holstered the Desert Eagle, wanting to appear as inconspicuous as possible. It was unlikely that he could be readily identified without hardware in his hand, and he was relying on a fast evac.

  The soldier cut his way through the people, keeping his eyes on the figure of Ross as he cut a swath into the now freely flowing crowd. He didn’t want to lose sight of him, but that was no problem. The immaculately dressed mercenary stood out because of his designer clothing.

  Ross, about twelve yards ahead of Bolan, reached the double doors and disappeared to the left. Anxious not to lose sight of him, Bolan redoubled his efforts to get through the crowd.

  “WHERE DID THAT Sicilian go?” Ross asked himself as he came out onto the street, straightening his jacket unconsciously, the Beretta neatly holstered. “And where is that Irish idiot?”

  Before deciding to be partners, Ross did his research. He knew all about the twisted lineage of Jimmy Goldman. Although he had a Jewish father, he had an Irish Catholic mother, and had been brought up entirely by her side of the family after his father had absconded with someone else’s business profits following the collapse of his accountancy company. The strange mix of cultures often caused the redhead to lose his temper at the slightest provocation. Which was why Ross was anxious to keep close on his tail. He wouldn’t put it past Goldman to try to get the information from Signella quickly by kneecapping him in a dark alley.

  That wouldn’t get them where they wanted to be. Ross was sure of that. He scanned up and down the street, desperately trying to make out a familiar face or body shape in the teeming crowd.

  There, down across the square, was Goldman, and he was walking quickly, in hot pursuit of Signella. Ross knew this as he caught sight of the Sicilian disappearing into an alleyway.

  Chances were that it was a dead end, as the back of the buildings lining the square on that side came up against hotels marking the beginnings of the rich quarter.

  Signella was all theirs.

  BOLAN CAME OUT of the club in time to see Ross striding across the square. Following Signella and Goldman into an alley?

  “Jack, do you copy?” Bolan asked as he followed the merc.

  “Yeah, I’m with you, Sarge,” Grimaldi replied. “Exactly what the hell happened in there?”

  “Goldman and Ross took Signella, then started a firefight in the club. But the idiots have let him get away. I’m following them right now, hoping that they’re actually following him, but I need some intel, fast.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Grimaldi said.

  “Have you got any blueprints and plans for Marseilles? Not just street maps, but something else…maybe with the sewers, any railways, something like that?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Grimaldi broke it, sounding elated. “That boy Walters is going to go a long way, Striker, you mark my words.”

  “I take it that means yes, then,” Bolan muttered dryly.

  “Oh yeah. What do you need to know, Sarge? I have the complete blueprints for the city in a nice little folder.”

  “I hope it has an index. This is a big place,” Bolan said. “I’m inAvignons Square, and I need to know about all the streets on the south side, leading to the harbor. Have they got dead ends, and have they got an access to the sewers and tunnels beneath.”

  While he spoke, he made his way around the square, trying to use the people walking the sidewalks as cover. Although Ross had strode straight across, Bolan was loathe to do this in case the merc looked back. The last thing the soldier wanted out in the open like this was another firefight. Especially when it seemed that the freelancers were conveniently leading him into a closed scenario that would make fighting much easier—and less likely to take out innocent bystanders.

  It took Grimaldi only a few moments to find the intel Bolan wanted, by which time the soldier had made his way to the entrance of the alley.

  “It’s called the Rue Vendredi, Jack,” he whispered, standing on the left of the alleyway, with his back to the shopfront that cornered the road.

  “Got it. It’s a dead end, all right, but there’s a storm drain cover at the closed end, just before the rear exterior wall of the Hotel Concorde. There’s a yard over that wall, about three yards to the rear of the building itself.”

  “I don’t think they’ll be going over that wall, somehow,” Bolan mused. “I’m going in, Jack. Keep the line open.”

  A storm drain cover. Marseilles was built on a slope that led toward the harbor and the docks, with the storm drain presumably opening out onto the sea along the harbor and dockside walls. With the sometimes heavy rains coming down from the hills, and the high water table of a chalk soil that edged onto the sea, Bolan was sure that the system had to be extensive—and large enough to accommodate a man.

  If the mercs were following Signella this far, then the chances were that he’d used the storm drain as an escape route.

  It would be a maze. Easier to lose them, and easier to be heard, as they would be the only ones down there.

  ROSS COULDN’T BELIEVE what he was seeing as he quickened his pace down the alley. In front of him, by the wall that cut off any further passage, his partner was disappearing down a manhole.

  “Jimmy,” Ross whispered.

  Goldman held up a hand and replied in a similarly subdued tone. “He’s down here. So you want to follow him or what? He’s the only lead.” And before his partner had a chance to argue, the redhead had lowered himself below street level.

  Ross looked at his immaculat
ely cut suit and expensive loafers. His socks were silk, and so fine that they were almost transparent. His shirt was the finest linen he could purchase in Saville Row, London.

  With a sigh, Errol Ross hurried across to the open manhole and sat beside it, tentatively feeling with his feet for any iron staples or rungs that would act as a foothold or ladder to the drains below. His loafers were so exquisitely made that he could feel every contour of the brickwork surrounding the rungs as his foot made contact. So exquisitely made that they would soon be decimated by the sewers below.

  “Oh, shit,” Ross muttered as he lowered himself into the manhole and pulled the cover across in his wake.

  BOLAN WATCHED Ross disappear, and the manhole cover swing back into place. As it slid smoothly into its groove and fit flush to the surface of the alley, Bolan began to move toward it. He knew that he would have to be careful, as the mercs would be able to hear him clearly in the storm drains unless he exacted extreme caution.

  The soldier covered the ground to the iron cover, then knelt with his ear to it. Faintly, he could hear the sounds of movement, growing more and more distant. He counted to ten slowly, then began to inch the cover from the opening. His eyebrow shot up in surprise as the cover lifted easily. It was heavy, but the groove into which it fit had been kept greased and free from rust and dirt. Obviously, it was a commonly used route into the drains.

  But why? Who, other than Signella, would use this route?

  Bolan, adopting a worst-case scenario to be prepared, could see that an underground storm drain system would provide a viable alternative route around the city for a number of parties that would not wish to be seen above ground—the kind of people who would carry some serious hardware.

  He wondered if this had also occurred to Ross and Goldman. If so, it would make them much more wary, and so Bolan would need to proceed with extreme caution, lest they should detect his presence.