Hell Night

“Are you away from the door yet?” the gravelly voice asked.

“We are,” the Executioner said.

The vault door began to swing slowly open. Then a blue-ski-masked face peered around the heavy steel at Bolan and the rest of the SWAT warriors. Seemingly satisfied, the man wearing the mask and coveralls pushed the vault door the rest of the way open to the wall, making sure no one was hiding behind it.

Stepping brazenly out of the vault, the man who had opened the door coughed as he waved for the men still inside to come out. One by one, they did.

But it wasn’t really one by one. More like two by two. Because three of the men had duct-taped pistols to the backs of the hostages’ heads. More duct tape secured the guns to the Rough Riders’ hands, and a strip of the sticky gray tape was across the eyes of the young man and two women who were pushed out and down the hall. All of the terrorists had pulled their blue ski masks down over their faces again. Their right hands held the pistols. Two AK-47s and an M-16 similar to Bolan’s were slung over their left shoulders, with their left hands grasping the rifles and their fingers inside the trigger guard.

Only the pregnant woman was free of the tape. She was ushered out last, a ski-masked Rough Rider jamming a revolver into her cheek as he guided her down the hall with his other hand.

The gravelly voiced man brought up the rear, cutting off his cell phone and dropping it into a pocket in his coveralls.

Bolan punched the Off button and returned Glasser’s phone to the SWAT commander.

As the procession walked toward them, Bolan stepped slowly forward, reaching out for the pregnant woman.

“No!” the cigarette smoker shouted, bringing up his M-16 and aiming it at the Executioner. The rest of the Rough Riders ground to a halt.

“You get her after we get the five million, and after we’re on the helicopter.”

Bolan nodded and stepped back. At this point, there was nothing else he could do.

The Rough Riders and their prisoners turned the corner and walked down the hall that led to the cashiers’ windows, then the lobby. Bolan, Glasser and the other SWAT men who had been inside the bank with them followed. When they reached the lobby, they saw more SWAT personnel, their AR-15s aimed at the Rough Riders.

Bolan held out a hand, palm down, then lowered it.

The SWAT men let their rifles fall to the end of their slings.

Outside, the Executioner could hear the whopping sound of helicopter blades. As he followed the Rough Riders and hostages through the front door of the bank he saw not one but two small choppers. The markings on their sides announced to the world that they were Kansas City Police aircraft.

The man with the hoarse voice turned in anger. “I said one helicopter,” he practically spit. “And neither one of those is big enough for all of us.”

A sandy-haired man in his late thirties, wearing a suit more expensive than any cop could afford, stepped forward out of the crowd of uniformed and plainclothes officers. “Sir, I’m Peter Johnson, Kansas City Police media officer. I’m sorry, but this was the best we could do at such short notice. After all, you only gave us twenty minutes.” He paused, the smile on his face forced. Bolan also noticed his hands trembling slightly at his sides. “You’re welcome to use both of the helicopters, of course.”

Bolan continued to watch the media officer. Peter Johnson wasn’t used to getting this close to the fire, and the man could feel his eyebrows getting singed. He probably wasn’t even a commissioned police officer—more of a public-relations man. And he wanted his part in this little minidrama over quickly.

“You’re more than welcome to both helicopters,” Johnson said again, his voice shaking.

For a moment, the man with the raspy voice seemed frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Then he motioned for two of the men holding the pistols to the backs of the hostages’ heads toward one chopper. The man guiding the pregnant woman went with them. The rest started toward the other helicopter.

Bolan frowned. This new kink in the situation both helped and hurt. It would be good to have the armed men separated so they had less collective firepower. But separating the hostages would make them more difficult to rescue. If the men in one helicopter heard gunfire from the other, they’d immediately pull the triggers on their duct-taped pistols.

The Executioner watched as the Rough Riders pushed their hostages into the choppers and took seats. The man with the rough voice took the arm of the pregnant woman and shoved her onboard with the others. “I’ve changed my mind,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Since you welched on the single-helicopter agreement, I think we’ll just keep this lady and the little bastard in her belly a while longer.”

Bolan wasn’t surprised. But the man’s sudden refusal to keep his word settled a question that had been in the Executioner’s mind ever since the hostages had been taken. If the man would lie about one thing, he’d lie about others. For all Bolan knew, he would keep all of the hostages when they got to the airplane, then kill every last one of them once they were in the air.

The bottom line was that the Executioner couldn’t afford to even let these men get off the ground in the helicopters.

As soon as the Rough Riders and their hostages were seated, the man with the gravelly voice shouted out, “Where’s the money?”

A uniformed officer holding a briefcase started past Bolan toward the choppers, but Bolan reached for the briefcase himself.

As he so often did, the Executioner came up with his plan of attack suddenly, ironing out the weak points in a few seconds. No, he could not allow the helicopters to take to the air—there was no third chopper handy. The KC police had wisely assumed that the Rough Riders would be on the lookout for an aerial tail. Which meant the terrorists and their hostages would reach the airport and be gone long before he got there via automobile.

It was time to act. The situation was much like he’d faced in the lobby only a few minutes earlier, when the man named Carl had held the .45 to the female bank employee’s head. The difference was that instead of one life to save, this time he had four. And it would all have to be done before the men holding the pistols could react and pull the triggers of the guns taped to the hostages’ heads.

Holding the briefcase in his left hand, the Executioner strode purposefully toward the chopper where the man with the raspy voice sat next to the pilot. With a quick glance to the other chopper, he made sure he was at an angle at which his actions could not be seen. Lifting the briefcase upward, he set it in the gravelly voiced man’s lap. Then, in one smooth, lightning-fast motion, he drew the sound-suppressed Beretta from his shoulder holster.

It took a little less than a quarter of a second for Bolan to get the first shot off and into the brain stem of a Rough Rider holding a Walther PPK taped to the head of a pretty young blond-haired woman. Another quarter of a second, and the other terrorist holding a .357 Magnum pistol taped to the young male hostage’s head went brain dead, as well.

The man with the raspy voice had just had time to look up from the opened briefcase in his lap when Bolan stuck the sound suppressed Beretta into the guy’s mouth and pulled the trigger.

The Executioner had wanted this man alive so he could question him. But it hadn’t worked out that way. So be it, Bolan thought. He’d just have to find another method of learning the ins and outs of the Rough Riders.

Less than one second had elapsed when the Executioner closed the briefcase, hid the Beretta behind it and started toward the other chopper. The angle of the sun made it difficult to see details inside the chopper. But at least he saw no flurries of movement that led him to believe the Rough Riders inside knew what had just happened in the other chopper.

He hoped.

“What are you doin’ bringin’ that thing here?” said a Rough Rider in a slow Southern accent. “It ain’t me who needs to check the money.” As Bolan walked confidently on, a cloud drifted over the sun behind him as if by an act of God, and suddenly he could see clearly into the helicopter. The man who had spoken had his hand taped to the gun which was, in turn, taped to the back of the head of a short, pretty brunette.

“Don’t ask me,” the Executioner said, simply to stall for time while he walked the last several steps. “Your boss told me to come show it to you, too.”

It was enough to confuse the men in the second chopper while Bolan took the final steps to the open helicopter door. When his thighs were pressed against the deck, he dropped the briefcase and put another near silent 9 mm round into the brain stem of the man with the taped hand.

The final Rough Rider was the one who had guided the pregnant woman out of the vault. And though he had the muzzle of his .45 pressed against her head now, it wasn’t taped. And he chose to swing his weapon toward the Executioner rather than kill the woman.

It was a mistake he would not live long enough to regret.

The man had the big automatic halfway to Bolan’s chest when the Executioner fired his last round into the head. The .45 went off but blew past Bolan’s side, harmlessly entering the bank through the broken window to lodge itself somewhere inside the lobby.

Suddenly, all of the Rough Riders were dead.

Bolan looked at the trembling little brunette and said softly, “Relax. It’s all over.” He reached up and flipped the safety on the gun still taped to the back of her head, then pulled a TOPS Special Assault Weapon knife—more usually referred to simply as a SAW—from the sheath on his belt. Carefully, he began cutting the tape away from the young woman’s head. Both she and the pregnant woman were crying, and Bolan had to stop the mother-to-be from hugging him. “Careful,” he smiled as her arms reached out. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your hairdo.”

The woman giggled nervously. “My hair doesn’t seem very important right now,” she said, and circled her arms around the Executioner’s chest, pressing her tear-stained cheek against his as well.

Bolan felt her extended abdomen against his belly. Inside was a totally innocent little boy or girl—a totally innocent baby who had come within a hair of dying by the hand of a group of whacked out, home-grown American terrorists. If not for him, both mother and child would more than likely be dead, and in a sudden epiphany the Executioner was reminded why he’d been put on this planet called Earth and given the special abilities that he had.

To save the weak and innocent from the strong and evil.

Bolan looked back toward the other chopper.

Glasser and one of his SWAT team men were cutting the pistols away from the hostages heads as Bolan had done. The rest of the men stood back, waiting.

As he started toward Tom Glasser, the cell phone in one of the pockets of his blacksuit suddenly rang.

The Executioner walked back into the bank lobby and thumbed the Talk button. “Striker,” he said.