Edge Of Hell

Bolan raced to catch a sign of the van, but it whirled out of sight.

Breathless, exhausted, covered with more injuries, Bolan contemplated the deadly mix of horrific history and decidedly modern technology.

Bolan glanced back to the lifeless form of the woman, defeat weighing him down as much as exhaustion.

Brass casings surrounded her, like a halo of golden tears flickering in the half-light spilling off the street. Her blue eyes met his, one final question in them, maybe even an answer that she would know, but could not tell anymore, an answer that would only come to light by finding her murderers.

He pulled out the small digital camera he kept in his pocket, a flat, bleeding-edge piece of technology that would allow him to take photographs of evidence he’d stumble across in the course of his battles. He got a picture of the victim’s face, though not quite sure what he’d do with it. Maybe Aaron Kurtzman back at Stony Man Farm could run the image, give him a head start on investigating the woman’s past and figure out why an armed commando team would dress as the Jack the Ripper and murder her in Whitechapel.

The weary soldier retrieved his Desert Eagle and his war bag, and limped off toward his room.

He was going to have to get as much rest as he could before morning because he was going to bring judgment to Jack the Ripper.

3

Liam Tern rubbed his chest, feeling the sore spots where two .44 Magnum slugs had connected solidly with his rib cage, hammering him even through the Kevlar body armor he wore. Suddenly, he was glad to have been wearing the heavy vestments of his Jack the Ripper disguise. Its flapping folds had obscured his body, throwing off the shooter’s point of aim.

“How are Danny and Serge?” he asked, entering the improvised sick bay.

“Serge looks like he’s gonna lose his leg. Danny’s foot is a hell of a mess,” the old man said, stripping off his rubber gloves. He hobbled over to the sink and Tern glanced over to Serge, who was in a doped-out state on the table. His leg had been torn apart by a point-blank burst of autofire, the muscle shredded away to expose gleaming white bone, shattered by a single 9 mm slug.

Danny was sitting in the corner, looking at the table, his face gaunt, his eyes wide with fear. “If Serge is going to lose that leg—”

Tern shook his head.

“Take it easy, Danny. He’ll be looked after,” Tern cooed in reassurance. He smiled gently at the young man, giving his brush-short red hair a tousle.

Tern glanced back at the old man, who shrugged and turned his back.

The blade’s handle was in Tern’s palm, but the wounded young man heard the sound of para cord striking the professional’s grip. Danny’s forearm bore down hard across Tern’s, his hazel eyes going wide, seeing betrayal.

“You fucking liar!” the kid bellowed.

Tern swept his hand down into Danny’s face, plunging his thumb into his eye. There was a grunt and a grimace, but the youngest member of the Ripper crew wasn’t letting go. The kid wasn’t distracted by the attack. An eye gouge wasn’t like getting a belly full of steel. Tern didn’t blame the kid as he pushed to get his knife up and into Danny’s gut.

“Just relax and die, Danny,” Tern snarled.

“Oh for God’s sake,” the old man grumbled.

Danny’s forehead suddenly exploded, blood spraying across Tern’s features, stinging his eyes. Hazel eyes stared sightlessly, head lolling on the shoulders of the dead man.

Tern dumped Danny on the table against the wall and turned just in time to see the old man level his pistol and put a mercy shot into Serge’s forehead. Serge jerked with the single impact, then was still. He couldn’t feel any more pain.

The old man unscrewed the sound suppressor from his pistol and plopped it in his pocket, holstering the gun.

“De Simmones…” Tern began.

“Lift with your knees, not your back,” the old man said with a wink. “We’ll dispose of them later.”

Tern sighed and shoved his shoulder under Danny’s sternum, lifting him up and flopping him onto Serge’s corpse.

He regretted having to kill Danny and Serge. Having two injured men would have alerted the authorities. A man with a leg broken by a point-blank burst of submachine-gun fire would have made any hospital suspicious. Serge would have bled to death in the amount of time it would have taken to find a physician with the skill and facilities to save his life. The man’s bleeding and the loss of the limb were his doom anyway.

Danny, on the other hand, was an even greater risk. He hadn’t been prepared for resistance, and getting shot gave Tern an expectation of what the kid was going to be like. He’d signed onto the job easy enough, having cut his way through the ranks, proving his toughness against the untrained shit-kickers in Ireland.

It was one thing to handle disorganized protesters and terrorists who were more successful at blowing themselves up with their own bombs. Against a fighting man like the soldier they’d just faced, Tern had realized Danny folded. He’d seen a killing machine whirling in action. Two of them, when Tern counted himself. The display had unseated Danny. In the future, there would have been too much of a pause, that niggling panic waiting to flare up and slow down the young fighter.

Tern rolled Danny’s eyelids closed then wrapped both of the dead bodies in plastic tarp.

“De Simmones said you needed help,” Carlton said as he entered the room. He was much shorter than Tern, only five foot six, but his upper body was thick and broad. Forearm muscles were laid in thick, rippling sheets poking out from under rolled-up sleeves, and he hefted one end of the tarp-wrapped body pack as easily as he handled the monstrous recoil of a machine gun.

“Makes you wonder what’ll happen when it’s our time,” Tern said.

Carlton shrugged his blocky shoulders. “We may get lucky and go out fast. Frankly, I always save a bullet for myself, so I don’t end up suffering like Serge.”

Tern shook his head. Serge had been a member of their team for a while. He was a vetted, blooded soldier. Unlike Danny, Serge had been hardened against tough odds.

As depressing as it was for the new kid to turn out to be a failure, it was worse when a longtime partner was dropped, and so easily.

No, it wasn’t easy.

The man in black was a damned good fighter. And Serge’s mangled leg was the source of agony. Tern still felt the bruises on his forearm where his fingers had dug in.

Tern took the other end of the tarp and they carried it to the van. “We’ll take the bodies to an incinerator.”

Carlton nodded as he backed into the van, the doors being held open by De Simmones and Courtley, the driver.

Tern glanced at De Simmones who just smiled. The smile said everything that Tern suspected. He and his men were expendable, and De Simmones wasn’t afraid to put a bullet into any of their heads.

“Come on, we have a long day ahead of us,” De Simmones replied.

“What about the man in black?” Carlton asked.

“I’ve called up Ripper Two for this job,” Tern told him. “If there’s anything left of him when they’re done with him, we’ll get called in for the kill.”

“Right now, we need distance,” De Simmones stated. “We’re an organization. Let’s take advantage of our strength in numbers, all right?”

Tern smirked.

He was glad, for now, that he was counted as a useful number. He still intended to keep his guns close in case that ledger ever changed against him.

HAL BROGNOLA KNEW the mathematics of asset versus risk that Mack Bolan provided to the Stony Man Farm project. While he was a useful member in the program to keep America safe from threats foreign and domestic, there was also a factor of risk whenever the Executioner was involved.

At that moment, the only mental math he wanted to do was to add five hours to the time to figure out where his longtime friend was while he was stuck in the Farm’s War Room, keeping a close eye on a Phoenix Force mission.

“It’s almost six there, isn’t it?” Brognola asked.

“That’s right,” Bolan answered. “You’re burning the midnight oil.”