Killing Game

There was no reason to waste any more time, or ammo, here.

The Executioner turned toward the third closet, which was set into the wall facing the front of the house. He still hadn’t checked under the bed but now he saw an arm reach out from beneath the bedspread holding a 9 mm SiG-Sauer.

Bolan aimed at the weapon and shot it out of the hand holding it. The gunner beneath the bed screamed in pain and jerked his arm back beneath the bed. The soldier dropped to the floor, facing the bed. Beneath the box spring, he could see the man with the bloody hand as well as two more of the CLODO terrorists. He wasn’t surprised.

But having their attacker drop down into firing range shocked the men under the bed, which caused them to hesitate.

And hesitation cost them their lives.

Bolan peppered the underside of the bed with 3-round bursts as the men tried to bring their weapons into target acquisition. It was a losing battle for them, and a second later they, too, lay dead in an ever-spreading pool of mixed blood.

The only place left that could have hidden a CLODO man was the final closet. The Executioner bounded back to his feet and squinted at the door. Its latch was down, too.

The roof in the front wall of the house was higher, so this door and closet were not as slanted as the other two had been. The Executioner moved swiftly now, speed having taken precedence over stealth.

This time, he didn’t have to open the door himself. It flew forward on its own, and a terrorist stepped out, aiming a 12-gauge Remington autoloading shotgun at the Executioner.

Bolan dived to the floor, as a heavy load of buckshot sailed over his head, missing him by millimeters. He twisted on the slick hardwood floor, then slid to the foot of the bed and turned onto his shoulder, the Desert Eagle aimed upward.

A moment later, two .44 Magnum rounds had destroyed the intestines and heart of the man with the Remington. He fell backward as the Executioner sprang to his feet again, ready to take out the next terrorist who came out of the closet.

But there were no more.

As the roar of the gunfire faded and the smell of cordite settled into his nostrils, Bolan heard footsteps on the stairs just outside the bedroom. A moment later, they stopped and a heavily Russian-accented voice said, “Don’t shoot, Cooper. It’s me.” Without waiting for an answer, Marynka Platinov stepped into the room. She had discarded the jacket that, along with the matching skirt, formed her suit. Both of her Colt Gold Cup pistols hung at the end of her arms, aimed at the floor.

The enormous Smith & Wesson 500 was tucked into her waistband along with her third .45.

The Russian quickly took in the dead men in the room, then turned to the Executioner. “You leave a trail of bodies that make finding you as easy as following bread crumbs,” she said, referring to the old fairy tale.

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “But how could you be sure it was me still alive up here?” Bolan asked her.

Platinov chuckled. “I have worked with you several times now, Cooper,” she said, “and you always seem to come out on top.”

Before Bolan could reply, the sound of distant but rapidly approaching police sirens broke the stillness on the top floor of the split-level house.

“We’d better search these guys for leads, and do it fast,” the Executioner said.

“Yes,” Platinov agreed.

The Executioner dropped to his knees and began going through the pockets of the last CLODO man he had killed. He pulled a wallet and a key ring out as he said, “How’d you like the 500 Magnum?”

Platinov tapped the Pachmayer grip covering the butt of the colossal revolver, which still stuck up out of the waistband of her skirt. “I’m keeping it,” she said. “You’ll have to get another one.” Then she sank to her knees and began helping Bolan with the search.

THE NISSAN PASSED several approaching police vehicles as Bolan and Platinov made a slow-speed, nondescript getaway from the split-level safe house. Just as they’d done before, they had hurriedly gathered all items of interest from the men’s pockets into a pair of sturdy canvas equipment bags and pulled away from the curb only seconds before the first flashing lights had appeared.

The French police would be operating off of the vague information given to them by their dispatcher, which would have originated from the telephone call of one of the neighbors. At this point, it would be thought of no differently than any of a half-dozen “disturbance” calls that they’d probably already worked that evening.

So as Bolan and Platinov looked at the two gendarmes, and the gendarmes returned the look as the vehicles passed each other, no one was stopped, questioned, or searched. Instead, all four heads within the vehicles nodded polite “hellos.”

The two drove on in silence as they headed back toward their hotel to go over the contents in the bags. Something had been bothering the Executioner ever since the first gunfight at the other house, and that concern had grown while they’d filled the bags with possible evidence. Now, as he turned onto Rue de La Foyette, what was bothering his unconscious finally surfaced in his mind.

It was not anything that he and Marynka Platinov had found at the two CLODO safe houses that bothered him. It was what they hadn’t found.

Platinov had evidently been thinking along the same lines because as they neared the hotel, she said, “Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time CLODO did anything big—I mean really big—was when they bombed the Phillips Data Plant way back in the 1980s, right?”

“Right,” Bolan said, pulling the Nissan into the hotel’s parking lot.

“And since Rouillan revived them a year or so ago, everything they have done has involved explosives of one kind or another. Correct?”

Bolan could tell she was headed in the same direction he’d been thinking. “Or guns,” the Executioner said. “Bombings and random machine-gunnings at train stations and other public places are pretty much their trademark.”

“Then why haven’t we found any bomb-making supplies at either of the safe houses we’ve hit?” Platinov asked bluntly. “Or weapons? Oh, we’ve found these men’s personal weapons. But we haven’t found either stores of arms and ammunition or the ingredients it takes to make bombs.”

Bolan nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “All we’ve come across are personal arms. The biggest and ‘baddest’ thing so far was that lone Browning on the second level back there.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Where are they storing their other rifles, hoarded ammunition, and everything else along that line if not at the safe houses? If CLODO’s really back in business, and going to war with the computer companies and everyone who uses computers, what are they planning to destroy everything with? Sledgehammers?”

The last suggestion had been meant to be sarcastic and Platinov took it as such. “That is bothering me, too,” she said. “Do you believe it is likely that their other weapons and explosive materials are hidden at some other location we haven’t come across yet?”

“That’s one possibility.”

For a moment, silence reigned over the Nissan again. Bolan parked the car, they got out, and he opened one of the rear doors. Then Platinov said, “Your tone of voice indicated that you believe there are other possibilities.” She opened the back door on her side of the vehicle.

“There are,” Bolan answered as they each pulled out one of the canvas bags and started toward the main entrance of the hotel. “But let me mull them around a little longer before I tell you about them,” he said. “I’m not all that straight with it myself, yet.”

Platinov had slipped back into her suit jacket to cover her double shoulder rig and now she shrugged. “Okay.”

Bolan shook his head at the bellmen when they hurried down the steps to help them with their bags. A moment later, Bolan and Platinov were picking up their key at the front desk, then boarding the elevator toward the third floor.

Once in the room, Bolan took a look at his watch. It was nearly 0200 hours in Paris, which would mean it was around 9:00 p.m. back home in the eastern States. Pulling his satellite phone from the inside pocket of his jacket, Bolan dialed the number to the Farm.

Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, answered. “Hello, Striker,” she said, using his mission code name. “What do you need?”

“Nothing at the moment.” He gave her a quick rundown of what had happened since their last conversation, then said, “I’ll probably be calling you back with more after we go through these bags.” He glanced at the two canvas bags that contained all of the evidence they’d taken from the safe house. “In the meantime, pass what I’ve just told you on to the Bear and see if he can make use of any of the information. He not only speaks, he thinks in computerese, so he may come up with some way to use some of this intel that would never cross the rest of our minds.”

“Will do, Striker,” Price said. “May I assume that you’re still working with Agent Platinov?”

There had been no trace of jealousy in Price’s voice. And no one who had heard the question would even notice that a tiny amount of resentment had even been in the question. But Bolan knew Barbara Price better than anyone else in the world, and he had picked up on it.

Barbara Price was a world-class beauty in her own right. And while both she and the Executioner were far too professional to allow their mutual attraction to interfere with the Farm’s operations, on the rare nights when he was able to stay over at Stony Man, Price had his undivided attention.

Finally Bolan said, “It’s still a joint op between us and Russia, but I’ll be the one who calls you.”

“Affirmative,” Price said. “Stony Man out, then.”

“Striker clear,” the Executioner said before tapping the “call kill” button. He looked across the bed to where Platinov sat cross-legged. She had already kicked off her shoes and dumped the contents of the canvas bags onto the bed in front of her. In her hands, she squinted at a scrap of paper that looked to have been folded and unfolded dozens of time.

Bolan joined her, and they came across the usual things found in men’s pockets—billfolds, keys, a few French Lagouille pocketknives. Hideout weapons such as fixed blade knives in ankle holsters, and one tiny .22 short North American Arms minirevolver. Some of the terrorists had carried several sets of IDs in different names—passports, driver’s licenses and other picture identification cards. When he had finished inspecting everything in his bag, Bolan frowned. There was a lot of stuff here. But as far as he could tell, none of it would lead them on down the trail toward Rouillan, his revived terrorist organization, or their upcoming big strike that was rumored to soon take place.

As he had searched the contents of the canvas bag, the Executioner had seen Platinov out of the corner of eye as she dug through her own pile of personal effects. But when he looked up now, he saw that the woman was again holding the same folded, then unfolded, scrap of paper he’d seen her looking at earlier.