Edge Of Hell

A shadowy form flashed around one aisle and Westerbridge sidestepped, taking cover behind a column of stored military supplies. He checked the load on both Ultimaxes, realizing that he was almost empty. He dropped the near empty guns and snatched a fresh one from its sling.

This time, he wasn’t going to grandstand and waste ammunition like an amateur. Just because he had four hundred rounds of firepower didn’t mean that it would find its target on automatic pilot. Both hands on the weapon, he stalked, keeping tight against the crates or anything that would stop a bullet.

Westerbridge didn’t have the benefit of the smaller attacker’s fleetness of foot and agility to dart between shelters from automatic fire. He poked slowly around one corner, spotting another gunman coming around the other way. The gangster’s mind flashed quickly on the fact that this guy wasn’t dressed in street clothes, and his face was smeared with black grease paint.

The massive gangster pulled the trigger a heartbeat before the man in black, pressing himself flat to the corner. A fireball from the front of the Ultimax burned like the inferno of hell just where he intended the mystery man to go.

THE EXECUTIONER HIT the ground as Sonny Westerbridge’s torrent of machine-gun fire exploded. The big man may not have been able to beat Bolan in a footrace, but with his finger on the trigger, and at eight hundred rounds per minute, he had the advantage, Kevlar body armor or not, with the deadly weapon. Bolan rolled hard to keep out of sight and out of the way of the blistering fusillade.

From behind the sheltering concrete of a support column, Bolan weighed his options. The distance was too short for a 40 mm grenade to prime and explode. One of his conventional fragmentation grenades would likely take him out as well, if the shrapnel and shock wave weren’t both deflected by the rows of shipping crates.

“You’re gonna die, little man,” Sonny Westerbridge said with a chuckle. “Your choice how—”

The Executioner wasn’t a man who was afraid to die. Whether it was in the terrorist wars of the Middle East, stopping a Chinese spy plot threatening world peace, or just locked in battle with gangsters in Soho, he knew that one day his luck would run out, defending the weak and helpless on any scale. He wasn’t, however, going to give up.

“Was that the same choice you gave Brenda Kightley, Westerbridge?” Bolan called out. This fight wasn’t going to be won with mere bullets and brawn. The giant gangster was too savvy, too tough for a simple slug in the brain box.

“Kightley, Kightley… I don’t remember no whore named Kightley, mate,” Westerbridge answered. He was moving. Trying to home in on the Executioner’s voice.

“An honest cop, ended her days with her head twisted 180 degrees, floating in Surrey Water,” Bolan returned. He shifted his position after speaking, getting ten feet away from where he’d hidden. Neither man could see the other, though Bolan heard the indefinite scuffle of Westerbridge’s heavy tread.

“Oh her. Fiery little minx… She really kicked when I gave her pretty little head a turn. You her partner? Naw, you’re a Yank, and packing way too much firepower to be a London cop. Boyfriend?”

Bolan paused. The row he was heading toward was composed of cardboard boxes filled with contraband electronics. They’d provide some protection against a salvo of 5.56 mm military rounds, but hardly enough. Westerbridge was herding him toward a position of weakness. The Executioner cursed himself for not being fully aware of his battlefield. It was a small detail, but it could mean the difference between a crippled arm and full protection.

A minor, hairbreadth mistake could put him at a disadvantage in a serious, up close conflict. Bolan pulled one of his fragmentation grenades off his harness and cupped it gently. He rolled the mini-blaster on the floor, making sure it clattered and skittered on the hard concrete.

Westerbridge spotted it and bounced into view.

Bolan opened fire, but the big gangster’s light beige suit only registered blackened tears as Parabellum rounds struck and were stopped by a layer of Kevlar. He went for a “failure drill,” swinging from center of mass to the head, ripping off another burst, but the big man’s skull and shoulders were back behind the protection of metal-skinned containers. Hollowpoint rounds sparked off steel, and the soldier stopped shooting.

The London giant was not going to be easy.

The Ultimax’s barrel of the Ultimax poked around a corner, flaming, but Bolan was as well entrenched as Westerbridge. This would keep up until the law responded to the gunfire and explosions.

With his back to the hard concrete wall the warehouse’s office stood on, Westerbridge was hard to approach.

Bolan’s eyes narrowed, and he stuffed a new 40 mm shell into the breech of the grenade launcher. The stubby little M-576 round held scores of buckshot pellets, making the M-203 the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun.

The Executioner stepped into the open, figuring his angles like a pool player, and triggered the blast from the rifle-grenade launcher combo, spitting out pellets in a sizzling barrage at the concrete embankment at Westerbridge’s back. The big gangster might have been unapproachable, but the swarm of round projectiles struck stone hard. Some embedded in the concrete, others bounced and sprayed back in a fan of peppering projectiles.

The gangster growled and grunted in rage and discomfort, stumbling into the open and spraying wildly. His pant leg on one side was soaked with blood, and his face was twisted into a mask of fury. Bolan felt two hammer blows strike him as he sidestepped. One round smashed his weapon from his fingers, plucking it from his hands and sending it hammering back into his chest. A second impact rolled off his vest-protected shoulder, the hit feeling like someone had dropped a small safe on his collarbone.

Westerbridge’s Ultimax locked open empty, but Bolan could see that the man had a massive revolver holstered, and another light machine gun slung over his shoulder. Right arm numbed, Bolan was slow in grabbing for his Desert Eagle, his left hand instead twisting and plucking the Beretta from its shoulder holster, trying to outdraw the huge mobster.

But Westerbridge wasn’t going for a fast draw. Instead, like a freight train, he lunged at Bolan, using the empty Ultimax like a spear and jarring Bolan’s left forearm. The Italian machine pistol went flying from the Executioner’s numbed fingers, but he managed to swing up his right fist, stuffed with the Desert Eagle, to jam it into Westerbridge’s gut.

The wounded giant didn’t even flinch from the impact, nor did he react to the first gunshot that exploded against his heavily muscled, Kevlar-wrapped side. Instead, massive arms slammed down on Bolan’s shoulders, driving him to his knees with almost crippling force.

“I told you! I told you, but you didn’t believe me!” Westerbridge shouted. “You’re gonna get like that Kightley bitch, except I’m twisting your head all the fucking way off!”

Bolan hooked his right arm behind the giant’s good leg and yanked back hard, punching the Englishman hard in the crotch. Westerbridge toppled backward, arms windmilling, fat, stubby fingers clawing at air and crates to keep from crashing to the floor. It was to no avail, and Bolan kept up the attack. Even as the British kingpin’s foot left the floor, Bolan rolled forward. Using his own broad, muscular chest for leverage, he heaved with all the strength in his right arm on the big man’s leg, hammering his left elbow with punishing force into Westerbridge’s lower gut. The sound of a popping knee joint accompanied a strangled belch and the smell of vomit in the wake of the attack.

The Executioner lunged off Westerbridge’s body, grabbing the Beretta and the Desert Eagle. His right arm still felt like limp spaghetti hanging from a battered shoulder, and his left forearm still tingled from the gangster’s chop, but he twisted, aiming both cannons as Westerbridge was clawing for his revolver in its holster.

There was no contest this time in the fast draw. Bolan had the drop on Westerbridge and triggered both his handguns, only marginally recognizing the feeling of a heavy .44-caliber slug rolling across his ballistic-nylon protected ribs. The big man’s head exploded. One lifeless blue eye stared at the ceiling, the other dangling from its socket from the impact of a .44 Magnum slug that had cratered his cheek.

The Executioner staggered to his feet, breathing hard. He shrugged his right shoulder, and from experience knew that it was only a minor injury, at worst a hairline fracture. He was certain that his left forearm was similarly bruised and battered from the way it tingled. Everything else, he could tell from a few twists of his torso, were mere bruises.

Bolan looked at the corpse at his feet, and frowned.

He wouldn’t have much time to rest and mend.

There were plenty of murderers like Westerbridge in the world, and perhaps because the Executioner had waited too long to take his shot at the English kingpin, a cop was dead.

The howls of London’s police cars reached his ears.

It was time to go.

2

Mack Bolan stopped at his war bag, sore and aching, but the first thing he did was pull out a bottle of antiseptic, no-rinse cleaning gel, and squeezed a healthy blob into the palm of his hand. Rubbing them together, then across his face and up into his hair, he smelled the rapidly evaporating alcohol content of the gel burning in his nostrils. After a few moments, his hands and face were dry, and the smell of gunpowder and blood on him was cut by half. He pulled out a packet of paper towels and gave himself another squeeze of the gel, and wiped the grime off his hands and face, so he wouldn’t look like he’d just been engaged in a commando raid.

The approaching London police cars were small little boxes that the Executioner knew no American lawman would ever want to be driving around in. He stuffed the broken Colt SMG and its grenade launcher into his war bag, and covered himself up with a boot-length black duster that he had rolled up inside.

The Underground entrance at Brunel Road wasn’t busy at that time of night, and dressed in black, with his collar flipped up, he didn’t look so much like a badass as someone trying to dress too hip for his age group. Bolan wasn’t interested in making the cover of GQ, though, so he didn’t worry about what people thought of the big guy in a black turtleneck, the duster and boots. In fact, he encountered more than a couple of people who made him look positively tame, adorned in black leather and gleaming, reflective steel studs and body piercings.

He collapsed into a seat on the train and allowed himself to relax, rummaging a bottle of acetaminophen out of a side pocket of his bag and swallowing four of them dry. The ache in his bones subsided some as they came out from under the river and stopped at Wapping to take on and let off passengers. By the time he reached his stop, he was feeling refreshed and revitalized.

Getting up and out of the Underground system, he jogged north, stopping occasionally along the way to check for any tails.

There were no hunters in evidence, so Bolan pulled a bottle of water from his gear bag and took a sip, then continued walking toward the bed-and-breakfast where he’d rented a room.

Bolan passed a small synagogue and was crossing Nelson Street when a police car crawled around a corner. The soldier lowered his head and casually stepped into an alley without skipping a beat.

His shoulders tightened, instincts kicking into gear, footsteps softening to mere whispers as he gently put his weight on the balls of his feet. The war bag was lowered gently to the ground, the duster’s front flap opening so that Bolan could reach the Beretta 93-R under his left arm.

He’d ducked into the alley to avoid police attention, and anything louder than the sound-suppressed Beretta would bring that weight down on him like a ton of bricks.

The Executioner had sworn an oath long ago—never to take the life of a lawman trying to do his job. He didn’t think that would be a risk. London policemen were rarely armed, and any cops who did pack heat were members of the famous “Flying Squad.” And by all reckoning, the Flying Squad would be back at Rotherhithe, all the way across the river, cleaning up the carnage of Westerbridge’s shattered empire.

Danger was always present, though. He remembered that over the past couple months, there had been a series of murders in the area. Nothing recent enough to make the headlines, but enough to have still been the talk of the diner where Bolan had eaten.

Bolan disappeared into the shadows of the alley, the blunt nose of the suppressor leading the way.

What he stumbled upon was a scene out of madness. A woman lay on the glistening ground, her eyes still open, staring sightlessly. Her belly was slit from pubis to sternum, the sheets of abdominal muscle parted and rolled over the sides of her body like rubbery flats. Her stomach was emptied out, her intestines thrown over one shoulder, like a thick, rubbery boa. Bolan’s jaw clenched as he watched the man over her finish scrawling, in blood, a cryptic phrase.

“The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.”