Throw Down

After all, what softer target could Islamic terrorists find than small, unguarded Christian churches?

The flutter of the helicopter blades above his head did little to drown out the gunfire Bolan heard below as Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man Farm’s top pilot, paused the chopper in midair above the tiny Catholic church standing out strangely in the middle-income residential area. Bolan recalled what he’d been told during the short helicopter “hop” from Chicago to Detroit.

The Catholic chapel had been built with money, and on a vacant lot, donated by an elderly retired schoolteacher who had never married. Having no heirs, she had passed on what little there was of her estate to the Church, with the request that the chapel be built in the medieval style reminiscent of many small Catholic churches in Europe. Her specifications had been followed to the letter, according to Stony Man Farm’s source of information, and Bolan was slightly surprised that the city had been willing to rezone the lot for the unusual building.

Looking down through the windshield of the whirlybird, Bolan counted an even dozen armed men hiding behind statues of saints and firing AK-47s. Others had entered the chapel and were shooting through broken stained glass windows.

They all appeared to be on the ground floor of the three-story building.

Atop the church, however, one side of the cross mounted on the steeple had been shot away. The sight caused Bolan, also known as the Executioner, to frown. Detroit Police cars and a pair of SWAT vans encircled the building. While some of the officers spoke into handheld walkie-talkies and cell phones, most were too busy returning fire toward the church. But surely none of them were such poor marksman that they had missed their targets by two stories.

“Bring her down another twenty feet or so, Jack,” Bolan told his pilot and longtime friend. “If I’m going into this gunfight I’d just as soon not start it with a broken leg.”

“You got it, big guy,” Grimaldi said, and reached for the control panel in front of him. Seconds later the helicopter began to drop through the air like a well-controlled butterfly. As they descended, Bolan saw the reason for the shot that had hit the cross on the steeple.

It had not been poor marksmanship. From this new vantage point, he could see that two of the terrorists had climbed all the way to the roof. Rather than blasting away with assault weapons, they were taking their time with bolt-action sniper rifles.

Bolan considered landing the chopper on the flat area of the church’s roof. So far, the enemies below hadn’t taken much interest in the helicopter. The cops, of course, wouldn’t shoot at him or Grimaldi. And the terrorists had probably surmised that the unmarked aircraft was from a news channel. They wouldn’t shoot, at least not until Bolan tipped his hand as an enemy combatant. Like all terrorists, they wanted all the news coverage they could get.

“Hold it here,” the Executioner said as he strapped the bungee cord harness around his shoulders, waist, and up between his thighs. The sharp cracks of rifle fire were becoming even louder. As Grimaldi continued to hover over the church, Bolan reached into one of the pockets of his stretchy, skintight black battle suit—known simply as a blacksuit—and pulled out his satellite phone. A moment later, he had tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, the top-secret counterterrorist organization with which he maintained an “arm’s length” working relationship.

At one point in his career, he had been the Farm’s top agent. But Bolan was by nature a loner. And he had returned to his one-man war against evil in all its forms, while remaining on professional and friendly terms with Stony Man Farm.

The telephone call bounced off several satellites, via phony phone numbers, before reaching its destination. The few seconds that took were well worth it when weighed against the possibility of a criminal or terrorist group intercepting the call. In addition, every word Bolan spoke into the phone, and every word spoken to him, would be scrambled beyond recognition to anyone who might have stumbled across the frequency.

Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s chief mission controller, picked up the receiver. “Hello, Striker,” she said, using the Executioner’s mission code name. “Ten-twenty?”

“Hovering over the steeple right now,” Bolan replied. “Getting ready to jump out to the end of this rubber band and engage in a little target practice.” He paused, taking in a deep breath. “The only reason I called is to make sure word got to the cops that I’m on their side.”

“That’s been affirmed,” Price said. “The local law enforcement forces are expecting a Fed to come falling from the sky.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “I just told Jack I didn’t want to start this fight with a broken leg. I’m not too crazy about bouncing around on this bungee, either, while the cops below fill me with lead, like some monkey on a string.”

“They won’t,” Price assured him. “If you get shot, it’ll be by the bad guys.”

Bolan chuckled softly. “That’s a great consolation,” he said with only a trace of sarcasm. “And we’re sure the guys who’ve taken over the church are Hezbollah?” he added.

“Ninety-nine percent,” Price replied. “That’s what the informant was told, anyway.”

For a brief moment, Bolan thought of the unusual set of circumstances that had brought him from the aftermath of an assault on the Chicago Mafia to Detroit. He had barely fired his final shot, ending the life and criminal career of the Windy City’s godfather, when his satellite phone had vibrated, alerting him that there was trouble in Detroit and that Grimaldi would meet him at the airport in a helicopter. Hal Brognola, the director of sensitive operations at Stony Man Farm, had told him that a Catholic chapel in Detroit was under attack. The informant had said it was the work of Hezbollah—the terrorist group of which the man had once been a member.

The informant was a member no longer. He had been converted to Christianity by the Arabic-speaking priest of the chapel, and the terrorist group presently had a multimillion dollar contract out on his life. But he had not left Hezbollah before learning that they’d planned to place a bomb inside the chapel. And that they were going in heavy—with firepower—just in case they got caught during the act.

Which they had.

The new Arabic Christian had revealed this information during a confession to the priest, and since the crime had not yet taken place, and stood a chance of being prevented, Father Patrick O’Melton was not bound by the confidentiality code between clergyman and confessor. A former U.S. Army Ranger who had served his country during the First Gulf War, O’Melton had wasted no time contacting the authorities.

Bolan slid the single-point sling of his M-16 A-2 over his shoulder. “See you later, Jack,” he said as he opened the chopper door.

“I always hope so,” Grimaldi replied.

The fall was short compared to a parachute jump, and before he knew it Bolan was reaching the end of the bungee cord and being jerked back up almost to the helicopter again.

The men on the ground floor were at no vantage point to fire at him as he sailed through the air once more, but the snipers atop the building had taken note of the chopper, and finally realized it was not from any news station. They turned their bolt action rifles his way, and a pair of “bees” buzzed past the Executioner as he continued to bounce. But the slow operation of the weapons kept the terrorists’ fire to a minimum.

Twisting to face them on the end of the bungee, Bolan raised the M-16 A-2 in his right hand and cut loose with a 3-round burst of fire. The first round struck the bolt of a sniper rifle, sending up a flash of sparks from the weapon, and a scream from the mouth of the man holding it, as the .223 hollowpoint bullet split and struck his chest and abdomen. The second and third rounds took the sniper perfectly in the heart, and he fell forward onto his face with no further shrieks or cries of pain.

Bolan flipped the quick release snap on his bungee harness as the cord began to stabilize, and fell to the roof on his belly. With the M-16 in the prone position, he pressed the trigger again, and another trio of .223 rounds burst from the weapon, taking off the top half of the second sniper’s head.

The Hezbollah man, wearing olive drab BDUs—battle dress uniform—like the rest of the terrorists Bolan had seen, didn’t make a sound. He just stumbled a few feet backward, then toppled over the short retaining wall that surrounded the roof of the church. The last things Bolan saw of him were his boots as he fell “half-headed” over the side.

As the gunfire below him continued, the Executioner moved swiftly toward an open trapdoor near the center of the roof. Flipping the selector switch in his weapon to semiauto, he stared down into the darkened hole.

Were the two men he’d just killed the only ones who had ascended from the bottom floor? There was no way of knowing. Other terrorists could be hidden within, waiting quietly for an assault from the roof.

There was only one way to find out.

Pulling a small ASP flashlight from another pocket of his blacksuit, the Executioner risked training a two-second beam of light down the steps. He saw and heard nothing. So, with the M-16 at the ready, he began to make his way down the stairs.

It took time for Bolan’s eyes to readjust to the near darkness of the third floor of the chapel. But he waited, not wanting to risk giving away his position with another flash from the ASP. A small amount of light came down from the open trapdoor, so he moved to a corner of what appeared to be a Sunday school classroom. He was ninety-nine percent certain that no one was with him on the top floor of the chapel. But in case that one percent came through, he wanted the darkness to work for him rather than against him.

As soon as he could make out the blurry shapes of tables and chairs in the room, the Executioner glanced around. He saw no light switches or signs of electricity in any form. But on the tables, and built into the walls, were large candles and oil lamps. Moving toward the staircase in the middle of the room, he passed a large crucifix, then a painting of Jesus Christ with his hands folded in prayer. Continuing on toward a hallway and another set of steps, Bolan kept listening to the rifle rounds exploding below him. They had become more muffled since he’d entered the building, but were just as regular.

And, he knew, just as deadly.

When he reached the staircase, Bolan aimed his assault rifle downward and stared at the steps. The second floor of the small building seemed as deserted as the third, and he nodded to himself. The clock was ticking. There was a bomb somewhere inside the chapel. What kind of device, and how it was rigged to go off, had not been included in Brognola’s brief. Bolan had barely had time to find out how Stony Man Farm’s director had come across the intel in the first place.

He needed to talk to the priest and the converted Hezbollah man. This was a golden opportunity—a one-in-a-million chance to learn the ins and outs of what else the terrorist group had planned for the near future. But that was not the primary goal at the moment. Before he interviewed the informant and the priest, he needed to keep Saint Michael’s Chapel from blowing up. And to do that meant both ridding the world of the terrorists on the ground floor and deactivating the bomb without destroying the chapel and the neighborhood surrounding it.

The Executioner’s brain continued to roll near the speed of light. He suspected this was a fairly low-tech operation on Hezbollah’s part. That meant that as soon as the terrorists began to think they were losing the gun battle, they would detonate the bomb by hand.

Slowly and quietly, Bolan began to descend the steps to the second floor. With each creak his boots made he paused, listening, to see if the men below had noticed it. But the gunfire continued, drowning out his quiet sounds on the stairs. Bolan realized the men below weren’t likely aware that he’d taken out their two snipers. That meant he still had surprise on his side.

And he’d need it. He was vastly outnumbered, and surprise was the only advantage he would have in this ongoing firefight.

Reaching the second floor, Bolan saw that it was as deserted as the third, and he realized that the terrorists’ plan for rifle fire had been as elemental as their plan for the bomb. Except for the two snipers he’d taken out on the roof, all of them were on the first floor.

Bolan halted his progress again, rapidly analyzing the situation. He could probably take out the men below by suddenly bounding down the final set of steps and launching a furious barrage of fire from the rear. But if he didn’t get the individual in charge of the bomb, or if the explosives were connected to a dead man’s switch, which would go off as soon as whoever was holding it relaxed his grip, Bolan might as well blow up the chapel himself.

He paused another moment before starting down the steps to the first floor. He had to admit, Hezbollah’s attack might be low-tech, but it included a well-thought-out battle plan. Men who didn’t mind dying, and thought it bought them a first-class ticket to paradise, held an incredible edge over warriors who were trying to kill the enemy and stay alive at the same time.

Bottom line in this situation was that the sooner Bolan wiped out all the terrorists on the first floor, the sooner the bomb would go off and destroy the chapel and probably the police officers surrounding it. Not to mention him.

He was fighting himself on this one.

* * *

THE CHAPEL WAS SMALL in comparison to most churches, and built of irregular stones that formed both the inside and the outside walls. One main room per story, with the staircase near the middle of each.