Final Assault

Bolan hefted an ascender—the same device used by repair technicians—and attached it to the elevator cable and his harness. Then he clipped his harness to the cable and took a slow breath. His heart rate was steady. Instinctively, he checked his harness and his gear once more, and then, with a sound like tearing silk, he began to descend the length of the shaft.

Despite being semiretired and in hiding from his enemies, Claricuzio had his fingers in more than one greasy pie. He ran any number of businesses at a remove, including some profitable prostitution rings in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. But not for much longer.

At that thought, Bolan’s sun-bronzed face split in a grim smile. In the earliest days of his long and bloody war, he’d gunned down men like Domingo by the dozen and had taken his own licks in turn. Bullets, blackjacks and blades had exacted a cruel toll from his flesh over the years, and he sometimes wondered if he were held together by nothing more than scar tissue and bone sutures. But it was all worth it, every moment of blood and pain. When beasts like Claricuzio were put down, lives were saved—the lives they would have ruined or tainted or ended.

The Executioner had needed only a few days to set everything up. He’d kept tabs on his target, and he knew the hotel’s layout down to the unconnected light switch on the first floor. Five guards were posted at any one time: one in Claricuzio’s suite, two on the hall doors and two more patrolling the floors above and below, respectively. If any of Claricuzio’s brood were visiting, there might be more, but the don’s family members weren’t the visiting types. Even so, there was a chance Bolan would be facing more resistance than just five inattentive and relatively lazy punks in bad suits, which meant he would have to be quick and careful. Even a punk could get lucky.

On that grim note, the soles of his boots touched the top of the elevator. Swiftly he disengaged his harness and dropped to his haunches. With the tip of his combat knife, he pried up the hatch and dropped through. Bolan disabled the control panel and pulled a small wedge of thick rubber from his harness. Holding it between his teeth, he carefully pried open the elevator doors and slid the wedge into the gap to hold the doors open. Next, Bolan removed a small dental mirror from a pocket, unfolded it and slid it through the gap at the bottom of the doors.

Angling it one way and then the other, he pinpointed the two guards in the hall. Bolan retracted the mirror, placed it in his pocket and pulled a smoke grenade from his harness. He hauled the doors open with one hand and popped the pin on the grenade. Then he rolled the canister down the corridor, where it hissed and spewed smoke.

Shouts of alarm cut the air. Bolan sent another grenade rolling down the hall in the opposite direction. When the corridor was filled with smoke, he stepped out. The soldier knew there were a number of possible responses to the tactic he’d just employed. Men with training, or an iota of common sense, might sit tight and call for backup. But the men Domingo Claricuzio had paid to keep him safe were neither trained nor sensible. They would either blunder into the smoke or—

Italian loafers scuffed the carpet. A man coughed and cursed. Bolan caught a blindly reaching hand and drove a fist into the exposed elbow. Bone snapped and the guard screamed. Bolan lifted a boot and slammed it down onto a vulnerable patella. The kneecap slid and cracked beneath the blow, and Bolan grabbed the screaming man by his lapels and whirled him around.

The guard jerked as a pistol snarled. Shooting blind was the other possibility. Bolan held the dying man upright and reached across his chest to grab the pistol holstered beneath the guard’s cheap jacket. Without pulling the gun from its holster, he twisted it up and got a grip on the butt. Then he charged forward, holding up the sagging weight of the dead man like a shield. The smoke billowed and swirled, parted by the abrupt motion. He saw the second guard, eyes wide, mouth agape, the black-barrelled automatic in his hand bobbing up to fire again. Bolan fired first. The rounds punched through its previous owner’s coat and perforated the skull of the guard who’d killed him. He fell back against the door to the stairs, a red halo marking the wall behind his head.

Bolan let his human shield drop and he spun, raising the UMP. He fired off a burst, chewing the frame of the door that led to Claricuzio’s rooms. The door, which had been in the process of opening, slammed shut. Bolan didn’t hesitate. He padded forward quickly, aware that the other two guards could show up at any time. He fired two quick bursts with the UMP, once where the lock would be and then where the hinges would be screwed into the frame. Then he hit the door with his shoulder and rode it down. His teeth rattled in his head as he landed but it was better than having them shot out of his head by the guard he knew was inside the room.

The latter let off a panicked shot that sliced the air above Bolan’s head, then fell screaming as the soldier cut his legs out from under him with a burst from the UMP. Bolan pushed himself to his feet and stepped fully into the room, pausing only to deliver the coup de grace to the wounded man.

Domingo Claricuzio sat in his chair, his eyes on the television in front of him. He looked like an elderly hawk, and any excess flesh he might have once possessed had sloughed off with the passage of years. Claricuzio was a dangerous man, quick with a blade or a garrotte even into his sixties. “I like this show,” Claricuzio said, apropos of nothing. He pulled his feet back as the blood from his guard soaked into the carpet. His gaze flicked to the dead man. He clucked his tongue. “His mother will be disappointed.”

His eyes tilted, taking in Bolan and the smoking weapon he cradled. “I expected you sooner.” It was said calmly. There was no fear or anger or hate in the old man’s eyes, just...nothing. It was like looking into the eyes of a shark.

Bolan stared at the old man silently. This was not what he’d expected. He had come intending to cut the head off a snake, but taking the mobster into custody would be just as effective.

“Get up,” he said. “You have a gun?”

Claricuzio made a face. “Do I have a gun? What do I look like?” he said.

A shout from behind propelled Bolan into motion, and with instinct born from painful experience he hurled himself to the side. The soldier crashed into the wall and used the momentum to spin himself around as a flurry of bullets cracked through the air where he’d been standing.

Claricuzio gave a shout and flung himself out of his chair. Bolan couldn’t take the time to track him. His trigger finger twitched, and he emptied the UMP’s clip into the first of the gunmen who’d entered the room behind him.

The second, whether through desperation or simple instinct, lunged past his compatriot’s falling body and crashed into Bolan. The Executioner let the UMP drop and grabbed his opponent’s wrist, twisting the black shape of the automatic up and away from his face. The gunman cursed him in Italian and hammered a punch into his side. Bolan barely felt it, thanks to his body armor. He smashed his forearm into the guard’s face as he squeezed the man’s wrist, forcing him to release his pistol. As the gun clattered to the floor, he jerked the man’s arm up and drove his fist into the fleshy point where arm met shoulder. The guard’s arm dislocated with an audible pop and he stumbled back, his face white with pain. Bolan didn’t let him get far.

He grabbed the guard’s shirt, whirled him about and snaked his arms around the man’s neck, snapping it. Bolan let the body topple forward and released a sharp breath.

Something dug into Bolan’s side. It didn’t penetrate his body armor, but it took the wind out of him. If Bolan hadn’t been wearing the armor, he would have been dead. The soldier twisted about, clawing for his knife as Claricuzio came at him again. “You asked if I had a gun. I don’t, but I got a knife, and I know just where to put it,” he said as he slashed at Bolan with a thin, medieval-looking stiletto. “You think you can just show up and take me down?”

“That was the plan,” Bolan said, backing away, one hand extended to block Claricuzio’s next blow. As he spoke, he drew his KA-BAR combat knife and held it low.

“Who sent you, hey? Anthony? Salvatore?” Claricuzio licked his lips. “Little Sasha?”

“None of the above,” Bolan said.

Claricuzio shook his head irritably. “You’ll tell me,” he said. He lunged, moving with the grace of a man half his age, almost quicker than Bolan’s eye could follow. The tip of the stiletto scratched a red line across Bolan’s chin as he ducked his head to protect his throat. The soldier drove his own knife into Claricuzio’s side, angling the blade toward the heart. The old mafioso stumbled against him with a strangled wheeze. Bolan extricated himself and the other man slid off his knife and tumbled to the floor.

He sank to his haunches beside Claricuzio but didn’t bother to check for a pulse. The old man was dead. Bolan’s knife had torn through his heart, and his blood was soaking into the floorboards, where it mingled with that of his guards. Bolan examined the withered features for a moment, then looked away. Claricuzio had deserved death, and he’d gotten it. The Executioner pushed himself to his feet and snatched up the UMP. It was time to go. The police likely wouldn’t arrive for some time, but there was no reason to tempt fate.

Bolan’s sat phone rang.

His mind considered and discarded possibilities in the millisecond between the second ring and the moment he accepted the call and raised the phone to his ear. “All finished, Striker?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” There was a brief hesitation. “Claricuzio—I don’t have to ask, I suppose.”

Something in Hal Brognola’s tone caused Bolan to snap alert. “What is it?”

“The usual,” Brognola said grimly.

Bolan looked at the bodies at his feet and said, “Talk.”

3 (#ulink_82adeca9-051e-50bb-bd44-1a830c6069dc)

The Gulf of Aden

“There he is,” Yacoub said softly. He made a surreptitious gesture toward the sky and the black shape moving through its wide, blue expanse.

Garrand glanced up and then back at his watch. He, Yacoub and three of his men stood on the Demeter’s upper deck, between the control room and what Garrand thought of as the cabana—a sheltered wet bar and outdoor swimming pool.

“Right on time,” he said. Ten hours had passed since they’d stormed the ship. The plan had gone off without a hitch, as he’d known it would. Though there were a few bodies to be disposed of, once they had time. He tapped his watch. “I’ll say this for him—he’s prompt.”

“He better be. I’m getting tired of standing out here in the sun so the remoras can film us,” Yacoub said, jerking the barrel of his weapon toward the gaggle of hostages corralled in the cabana. They were mostly press, with a few others mixed in—whose names and faces Garrand found vaguely familiar. Celebrities with nothing better to do than ride around on a retrofitted cargo ship, including three reality show finalists, an advice columnist and one style blogger, none of whom seemed to really understand their predicament. Or if they did, they were hiding it well.

Garrand smiled. He’d allowed the press to keep their cameras, and they had repaid him with a constant stream of camera flashes, equipment squawks and shouted questions. All part of the plan, he reminded himself as he watched the helicopter draw closer.

“I wonder where he got a helicopter,” Yacoub murmured. “Sure as hell not Eyl,” he added after a minute.

“Yemen,” Garrand said, shifting his rifle to a more comfortable position. “He has a finger in every pie.” He tugged at his keffiyeh, wanting a cigarette. Sweat rolled down under his collar. It was hot, and he was getting tired of playing pirate. He glanced at the hostages. They’d selected eight out of the twenty passengers—the most attractive and the most important. This was a photo opportunity, after all. The rest had been sealed below decks with the crew. Well, most of the crew, he thought with a satisfied sigh.

The Demeter had a crew of sixty, thirty of whom were security personnel. Of the thirty, only five weren’t in on the plan. Those five had been confined with the others after judicious application of rifle butts, fists and boots. Garrand had hired most of the security men himself, specifically for this trip, before his very public firing. Who fires somebody on Twitter? he thought. He didn’t even have an account. But that was a silly question. Nicholas Alva Pierpoint was exactly the sort of man who’d fire someone via social media.

“Helicopter’s not going to land,” Yacoub said.

“The pilot’s no fool,” Garrand replied. “Would you land a chopper on the deck of a ship swarming with guys wearing these—” he tugged on his keffiyeh “—and carrying automatic weapons?”

Yacoub laughed. “I suppose not.”

“Besides, you remember how Pierpoint likes to make an entrance.” Garrand pointed at the helicopter, which was now passing overhead. “And there he is now—the sixth most powerful man on the planet.”

As they watched, a tiny figure flung itself out of the helicopter and plummeted toward the Demeter. A rectangular parachute popped open and slowed the man’s descent. Yacoub whistled softly, and Garrand shook his head.

As expected, the hostages were filming the new arrival. At least one of them had managed to maintain a live feed of the “unfolding situation,” thanks to Garrand ensuring that the onboard wireless network was functioning. Garrand had no doubt that every news agency—legitimate, tabloid or otherwise—was salivating over the whole affair in real time. When in doubt, make news, he thought. That was one of Pierpoint’s guiding philosophies, right alongside “all publicity is good publicity.”

Well, he was getting both in spades with this one. One of his men halfheartedly raised his weapon and for a second, Garrand contemplated letting him get a shot off. Then he gestured sharply. The barrel of the rifle was lowered and Pierpoint landed light as a cat on the deck. Clad in black, he was dressed like a little boy playing war. Pierpoint was small and sandy haired and was wearing wraparound shades. Garrand thought he looked a little like a certain American movie star, the one who’d made that film about bartenders and liked to stand on couches. With an elegant flick of his fingers, Pierpoint snapped the deflated parachute loose from his harness and let the wind carry it out to sea.