The Killing Rule

“We’ve lost him.”

Lunk was already up and pulling Lord William to his feet. “Oh, what I owe that one.”

LordWilliam winced as he stood. “Do we have a plan, then?”

“Well—” Bolan could hear the thudding of boots even in the soundproofed office building “—we’ve lost our meat shield. I guess we’ll just have to make a door and take a van.”

“Meat shield…” Lunk’s laugh was like distant thunder.

“Cover your eyes.” Bolan raised his rifle and put a bullet into the window overlooking the river. The cracked window failed to shatter. The windows were armor glass. Bolan lowered his assault weapon. “Bill?”

Lord William shouldered his big .308 battle rifle and began squeezing off shots. Bits of glass flew like shrapnel throughout the hall. The glass was bullet resistant, not bulletproof. At point-blank range the rounds began to punch holes. Lord William lowered his rifle on a smoking empty chamber. “Bloody hell.”

The window looked like the surface of the moon but seemed far from falling apart. Jennings had built himself a fortress.

Bolan heard the door to the stairwell open down the hall. “Here they come.”

A cylinder skipped through the cracked door spewing CS gas.

Bolan strode forward, firing short bursts from his rifle at the door. Lunk fell into line behind him. The big man snapped open one leg of his machine gun’s bipod and came forward with his machine gun in the hip-assault position and spraying it like a fire hose. Bolan held his breath, but the rapidly expanding gas began stinging his eyes instantly.

The door was riddled with bullet holes under the onslaught. Bolan roared over the sound of gunfire, “Lunk! Door!”

Lunk kept moving forward and firing. When he was muzzle distant from the door, he put his size-16 boot into it. The wood buckled beneath the blow. Two men in gas masks reeled back as the door slammed off its hinges and into them. Bolan’s rifle cracked once, shattering the left-hand lens of one man’s mask. Lunk hammered the second man down with a long burst. Lord William moved onto the crowded landing, racked with coughing. His spent rifle was slung over his shoulder. He scooped up the fallen men’s Uzis.

Bolan calculated. He had about five rounds left in his rifle. Jennings undoubtedly had the spare ammo and supplies in his panic room, and he had said the police had been alerted. The enemy couldn’t afford a siege, and Bolan and his crew didn’t have the ammo to hold one off. He figured they were about to be rushed. Gas was filling the hall behind them.

The only way to go was down.

Bolan glanced back at Lord William, who was leaning heavily on the rail and limping slightly. He was an older man and having Lunk thrown on top of him had hurt more than he had let on.

But that gave Bolan an idea.

“Lunk?”

“Aye?”

Bolan nodded at the two dead men.

Lunk’s eyes widened. “Meat shield, then?”

“More like meat missile.” Bolan coughed.

“Oh—” Lunk shook his head and dropped his machine gun on its sling. “He’s a clever dick, this Yank is.” Lunk heaved up a dead man like a sack of potatoes. “On your go.”

Bolan slung his rifle and took Jennings’s commandeered 9 mm pistol in two hands.

A voice shouted out downstairs in command. “Go! Go! Go!”

Another gas grenade clattered onto the bottom landing.

“Now!” Bolan boomed.

Four men spilled into the stairwell spraying their silenced weapons upward. Lunk used the military press to raise the dead man over his head with a grunt and then dropped him over the rail. The stairs were narrow, and there was no cover to be taken. The two-hundred-pound corpse fell on its comrades, and two of them fell ugly beneath it. The other two barely kept their feet, as limp arms and legs clubbed them. Bolan was already moving. His pistol barked twice, and both men went limp from the head shots. The Executioner kept firing as he moved down the stairs and into the gas cloud. More men leaped into the stairway to meet him. They didn’t know what had happened, but they charged in depending on gas, body armor, numbers and firepower to win.

The second corpse fell onto the two lead men like a ton of bricks as Lunk gave the cadaver the bum’s rush from above. Lord William fired bursts from his Uzi. Bolan reached the ground floor grimacing into the gas. He was right on top of the grenade. Gas sprayed from the crevices between the piled bodies in gray geysers. Bolan stuck the SIG-Sauer pistol around the corner and fired it dry. He dropped the spent pistol and picked up a pair of Uzis for himself.

“Move! Move! Move!”

Lunk came halfway down the stairs and then leaped over the rail. Lord William came down the stairs as fast he was able. Bones broke and living men screamed as the giant Welshman landed on the pile. Lunk fell back against the wall and began firing bursts from his machine gun into the downstairs hall. “Go!”

Bolan rolled into the hall with an Uzi in each hand.

A voice was shouting in near hysterics. “Heavy resistance! Repeat! We are encountering heavy resistance! Automatic weapons! Request—”

Bolan could barely see the man down the hall crouched behind the reception desk. Bolan thrust out his Uzis and held down the trigger. Wood stripped and splintered and the man behind the desk screamed and fell. Bolan dropped the spent machine pistols and pulled his PPK. He moved to the courtyard door and scanned the outside.

It was blissfully clear of gas or men with Uzis.

Lunk ushered Lord William forward. The older man was gagging and clutching his face. Bolan himself could barely see or breathe. He took the baron’s arm, led him to the fountain and shoved his head under the water. Bolan let him go and rammed his own head under the surface. A few startled koi huddled in terror as Bolan swept his head back and forth and washed out his eyes. He surfaced to hear the strident sound of European police sirens in the distance. Lord William came up a second later with a gasp.

“Well…that’s a bit…better, then.” He sat heavily on the side of the fountain.

Lunk stood in the doorway, his eyes a solid red of inflamed blood vessels, and tears streaming down his cheeks. He held his eyes open and focused as he scanned down the hall through some superhuman act of Welsh willpower.

Bolan eyed the drainpipe Lunk had used to make his entrance and then glanced at Lord William. The old warrior wouldn’t make the climb and even Lunk wouldn’t be able to scale the slick iron carrying him. Even if he could, the two-story drop on the other side would be problematic.

“Lads.” Lord William was reading Bolan’s mind. “Just go. I can deal with the law, as well as Clive or any other bastard still running hot around the premises.”

Lord William would be facing weapons charges, unexplainable firefights, the use of war gas and possible multiple murder counts at a business that he was still officially the president of. Jennings was still in his panic room, and Bolan had a pretty good idea who would win in a “his word against mine” situation in a Netherlands courtroom.

Bolan grinned. “The hell you say.”

They were just going to have to go out the front door.

“Lunk?”

“I see movement in the lobby.”

“Let’s go.”

Bolan threw Lord William’s arm over his shoulder. He passed him off to Lunk at the doorway and the three of them moved down the hall. Bolan had counted ten out front before the engagement and had figured maybe the same number out back. They’d taken a terrible toll. There couldn’t be more than two or three fighters left among the enemy.

Lunk groaned. “Wait…” He dropped his weapon on its sling and propped Lord William against a wall. The Welshman ripped the 18-liter reservoir out of the lobby water cooler and upended it overhead his face. Lunk washed, gargled, snorted, spit and finally dropped the keg-size cooler with a thud. He shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry about that, but I haven’t been gassed since basic.”

Bolan caught movement outside. Two men were running for one of the vans. One of them had Miss Grietje Van Jan. Bolan threw open the glass doors and roared. “Freeze!”

One man whirled and the PPK snapped four times in Bolan’s hand. Two shots took the man in the chest and the second double tap took him in the head. Lunk and Lord William fell into formation on either side of Bolan. The second man kept his Uzi rammed into Grietje’s side. “I’ll kill her!”