Edge Of Hell

The man himself was an image out of a fever dream—a monstrosity ripped from a Victorian nightmare and made real. Draped in a long flowing cloak, the kind worn by period actors, and with a top hat adorning his head, he moved with an eerie swiftness and efficiency. He was tall and long-limbed, black gloves covering his big hands, and Bolan could have concealed a bazooka under the loose cloak the stranger wore. The Executioner wasn’t a man given to cold fear, but surprise and shock washed over him.

The part of his mind that was the man, Mack Bolan, reeled, stunned by the combination of atrocity and the knowledge of a century of legend and mythology smacking him in the face. He half hoped that there was a movie camera nearby, that this was the filming of some movie. But the Executioner knew better.

There was no faking the stench of a disemboweled person, no faking the ugly swelling of a slashed throat. Not to someone who had seen similar atrocities in the basement abattoirs of Mafia turkey doctors.

The Executioner snapped up the Beretta and triggered a 3-round burst, catching the graffiti-writing murderer between the shoulder blades, smashing him facefirst into his own work, smearing some letters as he slumped down the wall. Shooting a man in the back didn’t even register in Mack Bolan’s mind.

There was no need for judge and jury in this case. The murderer was caught, literally red-handed. Bolan approached the two bodies, keeping the Beretta’s muzzle aimed at the head of the unmoving figure.

Blank eyes stared at him from the dead woman, and once more, Bolan was reminded of the niggling anger he’d unleashed on Sonny Westerbridge. Perhaps if he’d arrived a few minutes earlier, those eyes would still see, instead of glaring sightlessly.

Bolan closed his eyes, trying to banish the thoughts. He was only human. He couldn’t swoop down and save the world from itself.

Something rustled and Bolan snapped his attention to the figure of the Jack the Ripper imitator on the ground. He was twirling, leg lashing up and knocking the Beretta from his grasp with a bone-jarring impact.

Bolan lunged and grabbed the leg.

Unlike with Westerbridge, however, this fighter was prepared. He was already retrieving his limb from the Executioner’s reach, one foot slamming into Bolan’s ankle. Only the tough leather of his boot kept bone and muscle from being anything more than bruised by the kick, but it still took the soldier off his feet.

The Ripper rolled to his knees, sneering, his top hat fallen away to reveal a face obscured by black makeup across his eyes and cheeks. Bolan only had a glimpse of the face, before he returned his attention to protecting himself, lifting a forearm to block a second kick aimed for his head. The strike hurt like hell, but he didn’t feel numbed paralysis in his fingers signaling a broken arm, and it was better than a skull fracture.

The Executioner lunged at the Ripper, shoulder cutting across the murderer at knee level and sending him toppling into the corpse of the murder victim. With all the strength he could muster, Bolan swung a fist toward the head of the murderer, but the cloaked killer lifted his shoulder and blocked the blow with a solid knob of muscular flesh and bone. The Ripper hooked his hand over Bolan’s forearm and pulled back hard, drawing a knife into the fight. Bolan raised his other forearm, catching his adversary across his wrist, blocking a lethal downward stab.

This wasn’t the blade of Jack the Ripper. It was a Gerber Light Military Fighter, six inches of razor-sharp, stainless steel with a decidedly modern glass-injected, nylon handle. Either way, it was sharp, it was pointy, and if Bolan slipped, he would be heartbeats away from being carved into thin slices.

The two men struggled against each other, the Executioner off balance, but his back and legs holding him up against the splayed-out but aggressive Ripper. They held that pose, a long tense moment, muscles straining, breaths creaking from closed-off throats, sweat soaking down through matted hair. It was a fight that would go on until they both suddenly gave out, muscles collapsing, and in that moment, the killer would have the slight edge. It was do or die, so Bolan let himself be folded under the pressure.

The Executioner rolled with the momentum of his opponent’s pull, dropping himself farther out of the knife’s slicing arc, and allowing himself the leverage to bring both boots up and rocketing into the Ripper’s knife-arm and chest. The impact jarred them both apart, separating them and giving Bolan breathing space to somersault back and go for his Desert Eagle.

So much for stealth. Bolan knew the Ripper had to be wearing some kind of armor, armor that needed more penetration than the Beretta’s hollowpoint rounds could provide. Even if he brought down half of the London Police Force and a regiment of SAS troops, this dangerous psychotic needed to be taken out of action, and that meant only the special kind of bone-shattering force that a 240-grain hollowpoint round could provide.

He triggered the big pistol, and the Ripper leaped for cover, his cloak obscuring the outline of his head. The fact that he was still moving meant that Bolan’s snap-shot missed. The Ripper’s dash continued, his head and body obscured by the cloak, making it almost impossible to determine where to shoot for a solid stop.

For the second time that night, Bolan offered up a grudging helping of respect for an opponent. This man may have proved a mentally unstable slasher, but he was also a formidable combatant. The Executioner chased him with three more .44 Magnum slugs in rapid succession, but between his armor and his speed, the Ripper reached the shielding bulk of a trash Dumpster, Bolan’s last two shots hammering steel instead of flesh.

The soldier took the brief pause to reload his Desert Eagle when the flashing outline of the cloak whipped around the corner of the garbage container. He triggered a fresh slug into the shadowy mass, and was answered with the sudden flare of a muzzle-flash. Impacts hammered along the Executioner’s chest, knocking him back on his heels, and Bolan fell to the ground, burning pain searing across his ribs.

The killer stepped out into the open, leveling the boxy frame of an Uzi- or Ingram-style machine pistol at Bolan’s fallen form. He inched closer, keeping the muzzle aimed at the downed warrior, then cursed, looking both ways up and down the alley.

“R-1, R-1, report,” came the crackle of a radio from inside the folds of the Ripper’s cloak.

“I’ve encountered resistance, I had to take action,” the killer answered. “Christ! I need help cleaning up this shit.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? This bloke comes out of nowhere and shoots me in the back. Next thing I know, a perfectly good serial killer scene is sporting enough brass from automatic weapons to start a fucking band!”

“Who was he?” the radio called.

“How the fuck should I know? We’ll run his face and prints after we dump him,” the Ripper replied.

“Dump him?”

“Of course dump him, you idiots,” the killer snapped. “What, we’re supposed to have the police believe that someone pulled an imitation of Jack the Ripper, and then, in the same alley in the same night, a heavily armed commando-type gets shot to death?”

“We’ve been yanking their chains for years, Ripper One.”

“Just get here and help me out.”

“We’re on our way, hold your ground,” came the answer over the communicator.

Ripper One stepped even closer, kicking the Desert Eagle out of Bolan’s limp fingers. The massive handgun clattered down the alley, and the murderer stepped back, flexing his grip on the handle of his MAC-11. Since the Executioner was down, he popped the empty clip and fed it a fresh one, never letting the muzzle sway from the motionless soldier. If there was any life in him, he’d have at least one shot to put things right if the man moved in mid-reload.

“You were pretty heavily armed for a short jaunt tonight, eh? A machine pistol and that fucking bazooka… I’ll be sporting bruises for a month. I wonder who you are?”

Ripper One tapped his toe into Bolan’s ribs, looking for any response. The man in black didn’t move in response to the kick. The Ripper realized that Bolan had only barely fallen for the oldest trick in the book, and only after a fight that left him battered and bruised. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake that the Executioner had and let his attention wander from a fallen foe.

At least not until he heard the scrunch of wheels at the close end of the alley.

“It’s about time,” the Ripper said, looking over his shoulder.

I agree, the Executioner thought, still feigning death.

Bolan was waiting to make a move the moment the killer dropped his guard, but so far the man was a by-the-book professional. Only a reluctance to have to police more bullet casings on his otherwise “pristine” murder scene had kept the madman from pulling the trigger and splattering Bolan’s brains all over the alley. But a gory head shot would have made even more of a mess of bloody evidence that wouldn’t match.

Whoever this guy was, he was obsessive about maintaining an image. Obsessive to the point that he might be in fear for his life if his ruse was blown by the slightest misstep.

The stench of a cover-up overwhelmed the stink of gore and gunpowder in the alley.

Bolan’s arm was starting to fall asleep, folded under his back, the steel frame of the Beretta poking him in the back and making him ache all the more. Falling on the gun was like taking a massive stapler to his spine, and his arm felt like it was going to pop from its socket.

But it was better than the pain of having his lungs collapse if the Ripper’s bullets had gotten through Bolan’s Kevlar vest—and it made him look like a convincing corpse.

The Ripper and his friends surrounded Bolan, three of them in total, and they bent to hook his shoulders and his feet. The Executioner’s gun hand dangled, Beretta still fisted. He fired point-blank into the foot of one man, his 9 mm slug smashing through leather, flesh and bone, raising a howl of agony.

Curses of fright filled the air and Bolan exploded into action, firing at the Ripper at crotch level. The killer managed to back off and reach for his own machine pistol.

Bolan had registered that his enemies had almost full-torso protection on their armor, even having a groin tabard. A pelvic hit would have dropped a man instantly thanks to the vulnerable bones and blood vessels at that intersection of the body. The Executioner fired a second burst at the Ripper to discourage him, then swung his weapon toward the man over his shoulder. A kick lashed out to disarm him again, but Bolan rolled out of the way. He was sick of being left weaponless this night. To express his displeasure at the subsequent effort, he fired a burst that tore out the thigh of the attacker.

Another man appeared from the van, aiming a weapon that outclassed the machine pistols and handguns at play in the alley—a Belgian Minimi-SAW. The weapon had two hundred rounds and was meant for use against vehicles, large concentrations of enemy troops, and as a force multiplier for small units against larger forces, much like the Ultimax that had nearly claimed Bolan’s life only an hour earlier.

Unlike Sonny Westerbridge, this guy knew how to lay down suppressive fire with a squad automatic weapon, dividing the alley between the Executioner and his opponents. The gunner was good, creating a wall of flying lead that would prove lethal to Bolan should he try to attack the Ripper and his crew, but stopped short of harming the trio. Bolan dived for cover behind a Dumpster as the storm of autofire hammered at him. Even the rolled steel shell of the container didn’t stop some of the slugs and bullets whizzed through perforated steel. The Ripper limped rapidly past him, and Bolan aimed for his head, triggering a 9 mm slug, but was driven back under cover by the rain of doom from the vehicle.

“Go! Go! Go!” the Ripper shouted.

Bolan made mental notes about the mysterious killer. Full-torso body armor, communications, unmarked transport and a machine gunner whose skill with a light machine gun rivaled his own—this guy was no simple madman.

The Ripper came back for his men, hauling them along while the gunner in the van continued his rock-and-roll serenade. He pushed his companions into the side door of the van, a black Volkswagen. The Executioner swung around, firing the Beretta until it ran dry, but the vehicle tore off, wheels screaming like a ghost, disappearing into the streets of Whitechapel.