Season of Slaughter Page 7

  Feeling the vibes.

  Bolan pulled himself partway up the wall around the estate and paused to feel the top of it. No broken glass was embedded in concrete to make crawling over the brick ledge a bloody and painful undertaking. Pulling himself up some more, he looked left and right. He didn’t see any inlays that suggested pressure sensors. A pocketful of dirt from the base of the wall poured from Bolan’s fist, the dust kicking up. No laser light was blocked by the floating dust particles.

  That didn’t mean much, in an age of infrared and microwave motion detectors. Before his fingers began cramping, Bolan swung both arms onto the wall and pushed himself up, kicking himself to a perched position on the wall. With a tree behind him, he was safe from being backlit from the street. He pulled out a field detector designed by Gadgets Schwarz. The little detector would give Bolan a good idea of what kind of electronic security he was facing. There was nothing.

  The Executioner’s instincts went into overdrive as he looked at the lit household. There was always a chance that Terin’s suburban home wasn’t protected by state-of-the-art electronics. Still, his eyes were adjusted to the night and he could tell that nobody was moving around outside, not even a guard dog.

  With a single step, Bolan dropped from the top of the ten-foot wall, landing in a crouch. He ate the distance to the closest window, crouching beneath it. The estate itself was a corner lot, with a small bit of land around it and a small security wall. The house itself was on a built-up hill, grass rolling down to disappear behind decorative stone-and-iron railings. The home was three stories, with castle-like turrets at each of the corners, and in the last dregs of daylight before he went to change into his infiltration gear, Bolan noticed that the brick was light gray and each conical roof on the turrets was of red tile. Two great balconies poked out from the second floor. Access to them had been from tall, arched-glass doorways. The front door was under the balconies and surrounded by the stone pillars that held them aloft. The third floor was under a sloped red-tiled rooftop, with tiny porthole-like windows giving Bolan the impression that it was more like an attic instead of a main living area.

  Crouched in the shadow of a tree and under a windowsill, Bolan could hear through the partially cracked window the sound of playing music. Risking exposure, he peeked into the room and met gauze curtains obscuring his view. He didn’t hear any movement and no shadows made their way in the room.

  Taking a risk, Bolan pushed the window, a pivoting design instead of a usual sliding style, inward and hefted himself through the opening. His boots landed on carpeting and he sidestepped behind the heavier curtains, listening for any reaction.

  There was none, and Bolan slid out from behind the curtain. On one wall, in an ornate oak cabinet, a CD player was playing, the speakers spread around the room to provide a surround-sound experience. He moved over to the player itself and discovered that it was playing on repeat. There was no telling how long it had been on, but coagulated droplets were sticking to the top of it.

  It wasn’t a failure of the maid service to clean up some spilled wine. The fifteen-thousand-dollar system had somehow been spattered with blood. He looked around the room. The dark carpeting had hidden the bloodstains from his notice until now.

  Bolan filled his hand with the Beretta and continued to stalk the house. He didn’t bother shutting off the CD player. The sudden lack of sound might alert anyone else in the home. He also didn’t need the hassle of fingerprints all over a crime scene that Hal Brognola would have to cover up.

  The soldier made a circuit of the first floor and found himself in the kitchen, spotting a couple of doors. He tested one, a pantry, then the other, a doorway to a cellar.

  Bolan gave the stairwell down a cursory glance, then carefully closed the door without making more than a subtle click. The basement would be saved for last, in case there were people on the upper levels. For all he knew, the blood droplets could have been from a cut caused by a wineglass, but he hadn’t seen any broken shards anywhere. Just to be safe, he looked in the sink and found only a couple intact mugs. He checked the trash. There was nothing broken there, either.

  He checked the first-floor bathroom and it was there that he noticed a towel with blood on it. He checked it and saw the familiar knife-edged pattern, painting the handtowel with crimson streaks. Bolan set down the towel and looked for a knife. Whoever made the kill had made a relatively bloodless incision. He figured it was a stab wound either to the kidney, which caused instant renal shock, or a stab through the base of the skull into the medula oblongata, the place where the spine met the brain. The skull puncture would actually be the least bloody.

  Exiting the bathroom, Bolan swung around and up the stairs, Beretta leading the way. He crouched deeper as he reached the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway in both directions of the T formed between the stairway and the hall. He took the right turn first, and found himself checking on the second-floor bath and shower, and a master bedroom. The drawers in the master bedroom had been tossed.

  Sloppy work, Bolan figured. Downstairs was fairly pristine, while up here was a shambles. The closet was thrown open and entire racks of men’s and women’s clothing had been tossed across the carpet. Boxes were dumped.

  Then it came to him. The trashing of the master bedroom was supposed to make it look like a robbery. Maybe a robbery-homicide.

  Someone else was stalking Hector Terin.

  Bolan moved back down the other turn from the stairs and found a pair of smaller bedrooms, both disturbed halfheartedly, and the half-open door of a den or office. Pushing the door open with the suppressor of his Beretta, he saw the office was messy and lived-in, but didn’t look at all as though it had been ransacked. Whoever the thief was, he was making it look like this wasn’t his goal. Still, a spot of redness on the armrest of the leather executive’s chair, still sticky, showed where a droplet of blood had come free from the killer. The chair was pushed back and away from the computer terminal, as if someone had just risen from it and was off and running.

  Bolan took out a small, credit-card-size-and-shape compact disk from a small protective casing and inserted it into the CD-ROM drive. He checked the front of the computer and found four USB ports under a panel on the face of the tower. This helped the Executioner out immensely, as he plucked a pair of tear-drop-shaped devices from his harness. “Thumb drives” they were called. Using Compact Flash technology, each of the little devices, when hooked up to a computer, could upload or download over a quarter of a gigabyte of information.

  The thumb drives were empty, and in Bolan’s opinion, they were amazingly useful in collecting information. More durable than a compact diskette, or even a traditional diskette, they hooked up to the fast USB ports that transferred data at lightning speed, working faster than any rewritable diskette drive. In moments, the diskette was taking over the hard drive and grabbing document, spreadsheet and picture files from deep within the hard drive. Most of the other programs would be useless for providing information to Stony Man Farm. At the prompting that the two thumb drives were full, Bolan inserted a second pair until he ended up with five of the tiny thumb drives full of information. He collected his disk from the drive and, using a cloth, wiped down the computer to hide his fingerprints.

  Making a choice, he decided to check the attic before heading down to the cellar. If he went down there, he’d be boxed in and blind to anyone approaching. A narrow set of stairs gave him access up and into the new area.

  The attic was lighted only from spills from streetlamps that painted various surfaces in blue highlights. Bolan pulled a pocket flash from his harness and snapped a red lens cap over the light. The crimson wavelengths wouldn’t travel as far or be as noticeable as white light, especially from the street, yet at cross-room ranges, it gave the Executioner plenty of light to see by. He could smell no trace of a corpse, nor hear of anyone in hiding. There was only old furniture covered by dropcloths, and wardrobes full of plastic-bagged clothing abounded, as well a
s assorted stored collectables.

  Every instinct told him that there was a dead body on the premises, and a killer getting farther away by the moment. Bolan turned and left the attic, knowing he didn’t have the time to toss the attic for clues or hidden files stored in any of the covered furniture. Time was of the essence.

  Heading back, he went back to the cellar entrance and moved slowly down the stairs. The stench in the cellar was unmistakable. He found the body and his earlier assessment was correct. It was lying on a clear plastic tarpaulin, coagulated blood dripping onto it from the fatal wound.

  The body was lying facedown, with a brutal puncture at the base of its skull. It was a man, a big guy, easily as tall as Bolan, with about twenty-five extra pounds of muscle. Unfortunately, muscle wasn’t what made a good security guard. Brains, alertness and reflexes counted for more weight than just big, powerful fists. He knelt and felt the body, testing one of the arms. Rigor mortis had set in, and the part of the hand that was resting on the floor was darkened with pooled blood. He’d been here awhile, though there was no obvious insect activity. Given how clean the house was, he didn’t expect bugs at this time of year, so an indication of when the man died would be made more difficult.

  Bolan shook his head and checked the man’s face. It wasn’t Terin. He pulled out a palm-size digital camera and took a couple of pictures of the victim to send back to Stony Man Farm for a possible ID. The killer had taken pains to inflict some damage on the guy before killing him. A couple teeth were missing and the nose was broken, nearly folded over onto one cheek.

  There was nothing more he could do, and Bolan’s gut churned at the murder of an innocent man. He turned and went back up toward the kitchen when he paused.

  There was movement up above.

  The Executioner was bottled in the basement and, from the sounds of things, whoever was coming in was heading right toward the basement.

  STEPHEN CAUL HATED his job these days, especially being stuck with the goons he was working with. Still, they were devoted to the same cause he was: the destruction of the United States’ government, a corrupt and squalid mess taken over by the Zionist Occupation Government. He never thought that he’d be able to stomach working with Arabs, but their hatred of the U.S. and Zionists was equal in every way to his own.

  He wouldn’t spend time with them. They reeked of garlic and were truly filthy creatures, despite their friendliness and noble intentions. He could also tell they barely tolerated him.

  Tough shit.

  Both the Army of the Hand of Christ and the Fist of God were giving Caul and his partners orders to work together. United, they could accomplish what neither group could ever hope to do on its own.

  Caul, Davison and the two Arabs got out of the SUV and walked through the front door. His gloved hands kept him from leaving fingerprints on the keys or the doorknobs, and he looked back to make sure none of his allies were without their own gloves. One of the camel jockeys showed his leather-clad palms and wiggled them with a smile.

  Caul thanked Christ for small favors and was the first through the door. The music was still playing, and though that didn’t mean anything, it was reassuring. It meant that no amateurs were in the house. Of course, if a professional were present, he would have left things as he’d found them, especially the music.

  Caul pulled his Colt .45 from its holster and led the way, stalking the house softly and silently. As if in a Conga line behind him, the others followed, their own guns drawn. Davison was scanning the staircase to the second floor for activity while the Arabs watched their back trail, making sure the front door was closed.

  Caul paused for a moment at the central security keypad for the building. He’d disabled it after getting the code out of the stiff in the basement. It was still disabled, and he felt a wave of relief until he noticed the door to the cellar. It was cracked ajar.

  He had left it firmly closed when he’d left.

  His eyes narrowed and he closed his fist. Davison knew the signal to tighten up in formation. The Arabs also tightened in their place in the human snakeline. Caul pointed to his eyes and to the door.

  Things had gone south fast.

  He slid a sound suppressor from his coat pocket and threaded it onto his weapon. The others followed suit. A raging gun battle in a mansion would attract the Oak Park police, and while they were a smaller department than the neighboring Chicago police, they were still well-armed and organized. They’d also be able to call on Chicago’s SWAT team for help if the situation got to loud and violent.

  The group had their pistols muffled now and Caul led them to the cellar door.

  For a moment a gut-squeezing silence endured, Caul and Davison on the left of the door, the Arabs at the hinges. Caul let the door swing open, then spun, aiming down into the stairwell. Nobody was there, and the light was still on. Taking the steps slowly, not letting his weight make any of them squeak, he edged sideways down into the basement, the muzzle of his sound-suppressed .45 sweeping ahead of him.

  The stiff was still here, his head turned to one side. Caul finger-waved Davison down to him, then they separated, checking the improvised rec room in the cellar. There were few places anyone could hide, but the two AHC warriors checked them swiftly and silently.

  In the meantime, the Arabs had made their way down and were moving to the next room. It was a laundry room, Caul remembered, and the two men were taking it with almost the same efficiency as the two ex-Rangers.

  Nothing happened.

  Davison wanted to say something, Caul could read it on his face, but the two maintained silence for operational security. Still, Caul waited for the Arabs to come back out. It was an uncomfortable minute before the Arabs returned.

  “It could have just been a thief who was frightened off by the discovery of a dead body,” Salih said softly. He still hadn’t relaxed from his tensed posture, though, and his gun was still in a two-handed grip.

  “Let’s not count on it,” Davison answered. He holstered his gun. “Someone give me a hand.”

  Caul nodded and motioned to the other Arab, Muqbil, and together the two men hefted the corpse and the plastic tarp it had been lying on, lugging their cargo up the stairs, leaving Salih and Caul alone in the basement.

  There was a long silence between the two men. Caul glanced to a closet and Salih nodded, knowing that it was the one place not accounted for. The two men aimed their weapons at the door. Caul pointed to Salih, and then pointed toward the lower half of the door. Salih nodded and took a kneeling position.

  Caul stepped to the closet door and touched the doorknob, keeping his gun away from the opening. There might have been a chance that whoever was hiding would try to dive out.

  He threw open the door, and Salih, to his credit, held his fire.

  The closet was empty. Caul hadn’t checked this room before and he turned on the light, seeing a closed window at the other end of the tiny little storeroom. Shelving on either side was loaded with assorted supplies and spilling-over junk bulged from the drawers of a dresser at the other end. He stepped in and investigated more, but was satisfied there was no one hiding inside the few inches of shadow available in the room.

  IT WAS A TIGHT SQUEEZE, getting through the window in the closet. Bolan’s broad shoulders almost were his undoing, but once he was at the bottom of the window well, his boots scrunching on white stone, he saw that he was in a four-foot-deep pit that was at the back of the house. Grabbing the lips of the hole, he shoved hard, driving up and outward just as light spilled through the window he’d just closed.

  He crawled forward quickly, turning to look back from the shadows to the little pit. A light went on in the closet and Bolan took that as his cue to back off and see what was going on around the front. Keeping low and to the shadows, he stalked around to where he could observe the driveway.

  Two men were carrying the plastic-wrapped body and stuffing it into the back of the SUV. They’d be driving off and leaving the Executioner to twiddle his thu
mbs if he couldn’t find a way to trace them. Bolan checked his harness and found one of Gadgets’s little tracker bugs.

  The only trouble was getting close enough to the vehicle without being seen by the two men outside. There was a call from the porch and one of the men moved back to the front door. The other was on the far side of the SUV. Bolan made a swift dash and was at the rear wheel of the vehicle, a big, dark green Bronco. He pulled a wad of adhesive and stuck it on the inside of the wheelwell, pushing the tracker hard against it. There was movement on the porch and Bolan dropped to the grass and rolled, slithering off into a thicket of ferns along the side of the driveway. The three-foot-tall plants covered him as he squeezed behind them.

  The Ford Bronco gunned to life and started backward down the driveway. Bolan remained still. Fortunately the headlights were left off by the driver. The killer and his friends weren’t trying to call attention to themselves, either. The Bronco paused at the gate, then backed onto the street after checking for traffic, only then turning on the lights.

  Bolan was up and running for the gate, as well.

  He had to get to his car before the Bronco was out of range.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “The body reeks.” Ibrahim Salih spoke up as he sat in the back seat of the Bronco.

  “That’s what corpses do,” Caul answered from the front. The other American, Davison, remained quiet except for a small grunt.

  “We are merely asserting,” Muqbil said, hands raised as if to fend off further anger, “that this is unclean.”

  “Fine. Have the U.S. government come slamming down onto us because we killed a man,” Caul replied. “I’ll even drop you off at FBI headquarters where you can wait till dawn with your thumbs up your asses.”