Hell Night

“Do we know how many hostages are inside?” the Executioner asked.

Glasser shook his head as he touched the cell phone to his ear for the next call. “Not exactly,” he said. “There’ll be twenty to thirty employees, plus however many customers happened to be there at the wrong time.”

Bolan nodded and started to move past the man.

Glasser reached out and grabbed Bolan’s arm. “Where are you going?” he asked.

The Executioner squatted again. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “And if you don’t know it, you can’t accidentally give it away to the enemy.” He paused for a deep breath, then went on. “Just conduct this operation as if I wasn’t here. But when you hear shots fired inside the bank again, move your men in as fast as possible. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“And give me one of those two-ways so I can keep track of you,” the Executioner said.

Glasser waved at one of his SWAT men, a slender sergeant with dark brown hair. “Give Cooper here your radio and mike,” he said. “Then go back to the van and get another one for yourself.”

The sergeant didn’t even bother to ask who Cooper was. Jerking the radio from his belt and the microphone from his shoulder, he handed them over.

The Executioner snapped the radio onto his belt, checked the earpiece connection, then shoved the tiny plastic receiver into one ear. He clipped the microphone to the shoulder of his blacksuit. He looked at his watch.

Not quite ninety seconds had passed since the raspy voice inside the bank had given them their twenty-minute deadline.

The innocents inside had roughly eighteen and a half minutes.

Police cars completely surrounded the bank. Three of the building’s four sides faced streets, and here the vehicles were lined up practically bumper to bumper. To the rear of the bank—beyond the drive-through windows—was a housing complex. Here, the police cars had pulled directly onto the grounds beyond the windows, doing their best to provide a buffer zone between the innocent residents in their houses and the miscreants in the bank. Behind the circle of cars knelt uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives and the rest of Glasser’s SWAT crew, each of the men training a weapon on the bank.

Moving to the rear of the bank, Bolan sprinted for one of the marked units separating the bank from the residential area. But no shots followed him.

Dropping down behind the black-and-white patrol car, Bolan found himself next to a portly patrolman resting his Glock 21 across the hood and aiming it toward the drive-through window into the bank. The man’s uniform cap had been discarded and lay next to him on the ground. Coarse but sparse red-and-gray hair stuck up from his receding hairline and balding pate.

The patrolman glanced at Bolan, then back to the bank.

“You seen any activity through that teller’s window since you’ve been here?” Bolan asked.

The patrolman nodded. “Some. There’s a guy with a ski mask just out of sight below the glass. He pops his head up every few seconds and—” The blue head suddenly appeared as the officer spoke. “There! You see him?”

Bolan nodded. “You see anyone else?”

The balding man shook his head. “Just him.”

The Executioner drew back slightly, taking in the rear of the bank as a whole. The First Fidelity Bank was a one-story building. Awnings covered the three drive-up windows with brick columns supporting what looked like shake-shingle roofs. He wondered whether they would support his two-hundred-plus pounds.

He suspected he was about to find out.

“What’s your name?” Bolan asked the cop next to him.

“Coleman,” said the man. “Call me Ron.”

“You might want to hold back on that familiarity until you hear the rest of what I’m about to say,” Bolan told him.

“Huh?”

“You wearing a vest, Coleman?” Bolan asked.

“You better believe it,” said the man with the sparse red-and-gray hair. “I’ve got a wife and kids I like to go home and see every night.”

“Shock plate inserted?” Bolan asked.

“Right over the old ticker. Thickest steel they make ’em in.” The KCPD officer’s voice was starting to sound suspicious now. “Why?”

“Because I need to use you as a decoy,” the Executioner said. “I’m going up on the roof. And if that blue ski mask happens to pop up at the wrong time and see me, it’ll ruin what I have in mind.”

Now the patrolman’s voice took on a true tone of trepidation. “What is it you expect me to do?”

“Just get up and start walking toward the window. If Mr. Ski Mask shows his head or a weapon or both, take cover behind one of those brick columns. I just need his attention on you and not me.”

“In other words, if someone has to get shot you’d rather it be me than you?”

“No,” Bolan said. “It’s just the way this thing has to go down, that’s all. If you don’t want to do it, say so now. I’ll try to think of something else.” He glanced at his watch. “But I’ve only got eleven minutes to come up with it and pull it off.” He paused, then finished with, “So, Coleman. What’ll it be?”

Bolan could see the concern on the man’s face as he weighed his responsibilities to the job versus those to his family.

“All right,” Coleman finally said. “Tell me exactly what you want me to do.” He paused, then added, “And you can still call me Ron.”

The Executioner smiled. It was a brave man he was working with.

“When I give you the word, just stand up and start walking directly toward the window. If you see the ski mask, make tracks for the brick column. After that, just stay where you are.”

“What are you going to be doing?” Coleman asked.

“Scaling the wall. But don’t look my way under any circumstances. I need that lookout’s attention focused on you, or the inside of the bank’s going to look like a Chicago slaughterhouse.”

Coleman reached up and adjusted his vest, making sure the steel plate was in place. “Makes me wish I’d sprung for the steel-plated jockstrap you can get with these things,” he said. “But what the hell. I’ve already got three kids and the wife and I were talking about a vasectomy anyway.” He turned to face the Executioner. “Say when.”

Bolan slung his M-16 A-2 over his shoulder and waited until the blue ski mask made another quick appearance, then disappeared. “Now!” he said under his breath and rose to his feet at the same time Coleman stood up. Coleman rounded the trunk, and the Executioner cut in front of the front bumper as both men made their way toward the building.

Bolan was running, Coleman walking—as he’d been instructed. So the Executioner reached the brick column supporting the carport several steps in front of the man. Sprinting at full speed, he lifted his right knee almost to his chin as his leather-and-nylon combat boot hit the bricks. His momentum carried him upward, and he got one more step with his left boot before he felt gravity beginning to overcome his own velocity.

Reaching skyward, the Executioner got his fingertips just over the edge of the shake-shingle roofing.

A second later, he had pulled himself up and out of sight on top of the carport.

No sooner had he risen to his knees than he heard several shots fired below him. Looking down, he saw Coleman driven back a step as the rounds clanged off the steel plate in his vest. But the balding cop he didn’t let that stop him. Before the man inside the window could fire again, he dived behind the brick column.

Bolan leaned over the side and looked down. He could see Coleman sitting with his back against the bricks, the sparse and spiky reddish-gray hair pointing straight up at the top of the carport. The Executioner whispered downward, “Ron, you okay?”

The KCPD patrolman was savvy enough not to look upward when he answered. “If you call feeling like you just took three straight hooks to the chest from Buster Douglas okay, then yeah—I’m just peachy.”

The Executioner chuckled. At least the man was out of danger now. He could sit out the rest of this encounter. “Okay,” he said. “Stay where you are.”